Disney's Third Dimension

Disney's latest is a tale of falling acorns and small chickens. In what seems to be a move designed to deflect attention from the lack of Pixar presence, you can also see it in 3D. Rich Phippen investigates...

A long time ago, I was in Disneyland. It was a family holiday around the late 80s, maybe the early 90s. One of the 'rides' was a rather tame sit-down-in-a-cinema affair involving Michael Jackson and the Muppets.

Not that I'd hold anything against Michael Jackson, I very much enjoyed the Muppet Show because it employed the use of 3D glasses. But not the sort you're used to, with the blue/green lenses and paper frames.

These glasses were good. They worked. They were green. The 3D effects were impressive, not laughable. These were clearly not the people to work on Jaws 3D, I thought to myself.

For 3D technology in the cinema has always been little more than a gimmick introduced to fight the dawn of television. From Panovision to Technicolor, Hollywood would do anything to keep people in theatres.

A good 15 years after my experiences with Disneyland, it appears the studio are finally ready to use 3D technology to wow the kids in theatres across the world (or at least, in the theatres that install the expensive new digital projectors needed).

Chicken Little, the most recent of the CGI cartoons and Disney's first without the help of Pixar, is the guinea pig on which the Mouse House are testing their 3D debut.

Primarily aimed at children, Chicken Little fails to cultivate a similar relationship to the one that exists between the adult audience and the Pixar hits, but the added element of the farm animals leaping from the screen will most probably give the parents an excuse to want to accompany the nippers.

The 3D imagery is impressive, but more so in providing depth to the animation as opposed to forcing objects to leap from the screen. The reaction of the kids at a pre-release screening was a positive one as they ducked and dodged acorns and cars.

"I thought I was going to get hit in the head by a tree!" exclaimed D'Arcy King, 6. Another happy punter, a nine year old by the name of Max, declared "It's the best 3D movie ever!"

Now, even presuming that Max has yet to see A Nightmare On Elm Street 6: Freddy's Dead, he isn't too far wide of the mark. Spy Kids 3D came unstuck when they got too clever, and The Adventures Of Shark Boy And Lava Girl were by no means that adventurous.

If, however, you've experienced the scale of the Imax, you will find anything that uses a screen a 5th of the size a bit underwhelming. Although some excellent use of sound, incorporating the latest technology in conjunction with the 3D imagery, creates an experience that engulfs you far more than any movie you've previously seen at the theatre.

It's an encouraging start. If they can carry technology like this into movies like King Kong, then 3D movies would finally shake off the gimmick tag.

Let's just hope Disney don't simply rely on it to paper over the Pixar-free cracks.

Rich Phippen