Chicken Little has got a lot to complain about. He's shunned by the town after an embarrassing incident involving a piece of sky.

He's ridiculed by his schoolmates, forced to don paper shorts after an "accident" and has relationship problems with his widowed father.

But, perhaps, most worrying of all...he looks remarkably like badboy DJ and entrepreneur Chris Evans.

CL's troubles started when he sent the good folks of Oakey Oaks into a dizzy spin when mistakenly proclaiming the sky was caving in.

Anointed the town laughingstock, the only folk who'll talk to him are ugly ducking Abby Mallard (Joan Cusack) and porky porker Runt (Steve Zahn).

However, redemption arrives in the form of a baseball came where Chicken Little hits the winning home run and everybody loves him again. Until.

Well, until an Independence Day-style horde of alien spacecraft mass above Earth and it looks like CL wasn't joking when he said a piece fell from the sky.

The first CGI-dominated cartoon since Disney parted company with Pixar, this zips along at a breakneck pace and packs a comic punch with some sharp gags.

Oakey Oaks - with its mutant cars and surreal public buildings - is a splendid creation and there's a wealth of invention in the action setpieces.

It attempts the clever stunt of appealing to both adults and nippers (although assigning Runt camp quirks like a Barbra Streisand obsession smacks of desperation).

That said, it's a genuine kid-pleaser and, as Disney enter a brave new technological age, something to crow about.

Tim Evans