Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes, reports that 37% of 164 surveyed critics gave positive reviews; the average score is 5.4/10. The critical consensus states: "Disney expends more effort in the technical presentation than in crafting an original storyline." Metacritic, gave the film an average score of 48 based on 32 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.
James Berardinelli, writing his review for ReelViews, gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four stating that "It is bogged down by many of the problems that have plagued Disney's recent traditional animated features: anonymous voice work, poor plot structure, and the mistaken belief that the Disney brand will elevate anything to a "must-see" level for viewers starved for family-friendly fare." On the syndicated television program Ebert & Roeper, critics Richard Roeper and Roger Ebert gave the film "Two Thumbs Down" with the former saying "I don't care whether the film is 2-D, 3-D, CGI, or hand-drawn, it all goes back to the story."
In his print review featured in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert stated the problem was the story and wrote, "As a general rule, if a movie is not about baseball or space aliens, and you have to use them, anyway, you should have started with a better premise." Ebert concluded his review with, "The movie did make me smile. It didn't make me laugh, and it didn't involve my emotions, or the higher regions of my intellect, for that matter. It's a perfectly acceptable feature cartoon for kids up to a certain age, but it doesn't have the universal appeal of some of the best recent animation."
Writing in The New York Times, film critic A.O. Scott stated the film is "a hectic, uninspired pastiche of catchphrases and clichés, with very little wit, inspiration or originality to bring its frantically moving images to genuine life." Entertainment Weekly film reviewer Lisa Schwarzbaum, who graded the film a C, wrote that the "banality of the acorns dropped in this particular endeavor, another in a new breed of mass-market comedy that substitutes self-reference for original wit and pop songs for emotional content."
However, Ty Burr of The Boston Globe gave the film a positive review saying the film was "shiny and peppy, with some solid laughs and dandy vocal performances". Olly Richards of Empire gave the film a three out of five stars, saying, "Beyond a cheeky, twisty bit of genre-tinkering, there's more here for the under-tens than over-, but it's still charming, amusing and energetic enough to win you over."
Angel Cohn of TV Guide gave the film three stars alluding the film that would "delight younger children with its bright colors and constant chaos, while adults are likely to be charmed by the witty banter, subtle one-liners, and a sweet father-son relationship." Peter Rainer, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, graded the film with an A− applauding that the "visuals are irrepressibly witty and so is the script, which morphs from the classic fable into a spoof on War of the Worlds. I prefer this version to Spielberg's."
Plugged In wrote, "A postscript for parents: A single "mistake" defines Chicken Little, and he spends "the rest of his life" trying to live it down. As he puts it, "One moment destroyed my life." Later, another single moment—his home run—redefines him as a hero to his friends and his dad, who says, "I guess that puts the whole 'sky is falling' incident behind us once and for all." Insecure (and observant) young viewers may latch on to this kind of oversimplification and use it as license to magnify the significance of their own bumblings, whatever they might be." Common Sense Media gave the film a three out of five stars, writing, "Cute, sometimes-frantic movie has peril, potential scares."
In 2020, Dindal expressed regret over the final version of the film:
I think, Oh that [early] version ...Then I'm reconnected with what I'm thinking at the time. And you're thinking how that version would have turned out. If we had stuck with that instead of this. If we had pushed Eisner and said, It has to be a girl,' it could have been killed... With this, I wish I could see an alternate reality, what that would have been like.
