Chicken Little

The film is inspired by the fable The Sky is Falling (also known as Chicken Licken, Henny Penny, or Chicken Little). In the small suburban town of Oakey Oaks, Chicken Little rings the school bell and cries for everyone to "run for your lives!" This sends the whole town into a frenzied panic that causes so much havoc that it destroys a small part of the town; eventually they calm down enough to ask him what's wrong, and Chicken Little explains that a piece of the sky shaped like a stop sign had fallen on his head when he was sitting under the big oak tree in the town square. He's unable to find the piece now. His father, Buck Cluck, ashamedly assumes that this "piece of sky" was just an acorn that had fallen off the tree and had hit him on the head. Chicken Little becomes the laughing stock of the town.

A year later, Little has become famous in the town for being crazy, which has led to people avoiding him because of his supposed insanity, his only friends are outcasts like himself: Abby Mallard, who is called "Ugly Duckling" (who has a crush on Chicken Little); Runt of the Litter, who is extremely large despite being the smallest in his family; and Fish out of Water, who wears a helmet full of water and does not speak. All have been mocked and teased by neighborhood bully Foxy Loxy and her friend Goosey Loosey.

During a dodgeball game (the coach pits the popular vs. the unpopular), Abby tells Little to talk to his dad, when Little wants his dad to be proud. While Little, Abby and Fish are dodging, Runt is getting hit by every ball thrown at him. To help Chicken, Abby hands Little magazines about talking to your parents, but he hands them to Fish, who immediately starts ripping pages out of each one, making a miniature building and airplanes. Fish then proceeds to pull a King Kong impersonation. Foxy and Goosey bully Little and Friends soon after.

Chicken Little joins his school's Little League baseball team in an attempt to recover his reputation and his father's pride, but is unfairly made last, while Foxy Loxy impresses spectators and the newspapers with her pitches and "miracle catches" -- until the ninth inning when Chicken Little, reluctantly called to bat by the coach, who tells him not to swing as he's certain that if Chicken Little tries to swing, he'll lose the game for them, scores an inside-the-park home run after two strikes.

But that night back at home, while celebrating his victory by singing "We Are The Champions" by Queen in his own style, and his father's praise, he is hit on the head - by what appears to be a chunk of the sky shaped like a stop sign - only (after narrowly avoiding telling his father about it) to find out that it is not a piece of the sky, but something else. It has chameleonic characteristics- it's not invisible, but it blends into the background (which would thereby explain why Chicken Little was unable to find it last time). Meanwhile his friends are singing karaoke to the Spice Girls' "Wannabe", until Little calls them over to help figure out what it is.

When Fish pushes a button on the back of the octagon, it flies back up into the sky, taking Fish with it. It turns out to be part of the camouflage of an invisible alien spacecraft. They chase the flying ship until it lands; they go inside, encounter a small orange alien, find Fish, and are about to escape when two aliens in robotic suits spot them. A chase ensues that goes outside the ship and into town (the orange alien still following in secret). Little manages to ring the bell to warn everyone, but the aliens see the crowds coming and manage to escape, leaving the orange one behind. No one believes the story of an alien invasion; Little is ridiculed all over again, and everything seems to be going down the tubes for him, until the next day; he and his friends discover the orange alien, and a few minutes later a whole fleet of alien ships descends on the town.

The invasion is actually a misunderstanding, as two aliens (who are red and yellow making their child orange) are looking for their lost child (whose name is Kirby) and attack only out of concern. It's not an invasion, it's a rescue mission. As the aliens rampage throughout Oakey Oaks, vapourising people and objects (among them Foxy Loxy and the mayor) seemingly at random, Little realizes he must return Kirby to his parents to save the planet. At first he tries to do it covertly but once the aliens attack, he's forced to confront his father and regain his trust first. They share a caring moment in a movie theater. Abby interrupts them and requests that they hurry up. Little and Cluck are seen leaving the theater, but before leaving, Chicken Little admits his romantic feelings for Abby and kisses her.

In the invasion, Buck Cluck, now regaining his pride and trust in Little, defends Little from the aliens, even going as far as deflecting an incoming vaporiser ray with a garbage can lid, throwing the lid at the creatures, and punching them away at the top of town hall. Abby, Runt and Fish also aid Chicken Little in his quest to return Kirby to his parents. It is then discovered that the aliens weren't vaporising people, the ray guns teleported them aboard a spaceship. Afterwards, the aliens return everything to normal (though Foxy Loxy's mind was slightly scrambled after she was restored, making her more girly and kind), and Hollywood makes a heavily dramatized film about Chicken Little. The actor portraying Little is a handsome, muscular rooster while Abby is an attractive looking goose. Runt is a brutish hog with horns who dies a heroic death while fighting the aliens and the actor who plays Fish looks exactly the same in the same but is able to converse in English. At the end of the movie, Little and Abby are seen secretly holding hands in their popcorn bucket, and everyone cheers for Chicken Little's efforts to save the town.

Monster House

The plot revolves around a preteen boy, Douglas J. "D.J." Walters (Mitchel Musso), who spends lots of his free time spying the house (which bears resemblance to that of Norman Bates from the Hitchcock film Psycho) across the street and its owner, Mr.Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi), a crotchety old man who terrorizes anyone who steps anywhere on his lawn or close to his house.

Even though DJ has seen Nebbercracker take several toys from kids that have stepped in his grounds, his parents (Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard), dismiss his comments easily as "kid talk". They then leave town for the weekend for a dental convention.

Charles "Chowder" (Sam Lerner), a chubby teenage boy who is DJ's best friend, shows up with a new basketball to play with DJ. When they lose it in Nebbercracker's lawn, DJ ventures there to recover it, thinking he might be asleep. However, he appears and grabs DJ lifting him and screaming at him. This causes him to collapse, seemingly dead, causing DJ to feel responsible. While Nebbercracker is being carried away by the paramedics, he drops a gold key on his lawn, which DJ scoops up.

DJ's apathetic Punk babysitter Elizabeth (Maggie Gyllenhaal), or "Zee" as she prefers to be called, arrives taking over the house and sending DJ to his room. At night, DJ gets a call apparently from Nebbercracker's house. Also, Zee's boyfriend, Bones (Jason Lee), comes over to the house and start making fun of DJ, scaring him.

After they leave, DJ calls Chowder and they agree to meet at a construction lot. As he leaves, he overhears Zee and Bones talking about Nebbercracker, and how he took a kite from Bones when he was a 10 year old. Bones also tells of how he has seen the old man speaking to his house and about a legend around town that he fattened up his wife and ate her. However, Zee ends up kicking him out after he pounces on her.

A drunk Bones goes over to Mr. Nebbercracker's house and rants at it while stepping on the lawn and ripping the grass off it. As he does it, the door opened revealing Bones' "awesome kite". He attempts to retrieve it, only to be swallowed up by the house.

After DJ meet Chowder, they decide to investigate the house. Chowder goes up to it, and tries to ring its doorbell and run, but the house comes to life and attempts to eat him. They run back to DJ's house and spend the night watching across the street.

The next morning, a girl named Jenny Bennet (Spencer Locke) comes up to DJ's house and sells Zee some Halloween chocolates. After giving the kids the chocolates, they see the same girl going to Mr. Nebbercracker's house to sell too. The boys run out to tell her to go away, but the house tries to eat her as well. However, DJ and Chowder manage to catch Jenny before she is eaten. When Zee sees them outside she goes out but doesn't believe anything and drives off to look for Bones.

Scared by what happened, they return to DJ's room where both kids try to impress Jenny, pretending to be older and more mature. As they keep watching the house, they see how a small dog is swallowed when he is about to pee on the lawn. Jenny, shocked, decides to send for the police. The police officers Landers and Lester (Kevin James and Nick Cannon respectively) do not believe their story, mainly because the house doesn't react to any teasing while the cops are in front of it. If anything they get in trouble because DJ attempted to make the house move by throwing a rock at it.

The children then go to an arcade and talk to a video-game addict nicknamed Skull (Jon Heder) looking for advice. They learn that the house is actually a monster known as "domus mactibilis" (deadly home in Latin), which is created when a human soul merges with a man-made structure, such as a house. They conclude that the house is Nebbercracker back from the dead and that the only way to 'kill' the house is to destroy its heart which Skull reveals is its only weakness. Upon returning to DJ's house, the three draw out a plan to destroy the house, after deciding that the furnace is the heart. They conclude this since smoke has been coming out of the chimney ever since Mr. Nebbercracker died.

The kids devise a plan to make a dummy using a vacuum, and filling it with cold medicine stolen from Chowder's father's pharmacy intending to "drug" the house. As the house is about to swallow the dummy, the cops arrive again prompting the house to "hide" again. Officer Landers decide to take the three kids to jail after discovering the stolen medicines. After putting them in the car, Lester hears a sound from inside the house and the two go investigate it. As they approach, a tree disarms Lester and the house swallows him. Seconds later, it also devours Landers. The kids watch, horrified, and the house soon also eats the police car, though the kids survive by jumping out the broken back window.

As the group is trapped inside the house, they notice it's asleep probably, assuming that it had gotten rid of the kids. They start to explore the house, finding boxes of explosives (indicating that Nebbercracker used to work in demolition), a pair of binoculars on the end of an extender facing DJ's house (meaning that he was watching DJ just like how DJ was watching him), and pictures of a very large woman, among other things. They conclude that Nebbercracker did have a wife. As they descend to the basement they find the stash of stolen toys Nebbercracker has taken from kids. They also see a locked circus-style cage. DJ opens it with the key the old man had dropped previously and they see the body of the wife covered in cement. She was once known as Constance the Giantess, and Nebbercracker had built a shrine around her after she died.

When DJ trips and lands on Constance's body, revealing her skeleton, the house wakes up and starts attacking the kids. However, they manage to escape as they force the house to "vomit" them outside by pulling a large lamp in the foyer that the house apparently uses as its uvula. As they are returning home, they see Nebbercracker being brought back to his house, with an arm in a sling. DJ confronts him and tells him how he knows about Constance. Nebbercracker breaks down and reveals his story.

Nebbercracker tells of how he met Constance (Kathleen Turner), a very obese lady who was an unwilling member of a circus freak show, and fell in love with her. After helping her escape they moved to a new land and he started building the house she always wanted. However, children taunted her for her weight and threw things at her, making her hate children. One day, as a consequence to her attacks, Constance lost her footing and as she fell from the edge of the foundation of the house she grabbed the lever of a cement mixer, which covered her in cement after she fell several meters below to her death.. A saddened Nebbercracker finished the house because he knew she would have wanted that.

Apparently, after Constance's death, her spirit possessed the house she wanted to see finished, further attacking any child who approaches. To protect the children from the wrath of his house, Mr. Nebbercracker pretended to be a child-hating old man to keep them away from the house — especially during Halloween. However, Nebbercracker feels it is time for the house to be destroyed. The house overhears, and becomes very angry attacking him and the kids.

As they flee from the now-walking house, they run to the construction lot where Chowder and DJ met earlier. Reluctantly, Nebbercracker attempts to throw a stick of dynamite inside the house, but he fails. Chowder then attacks the house with a backhoe saving Nebbercracker. this destroys the house's structure, but since the chimney is intact (which DJ realizes is the heart not the furnace after all), the body rebuilds itself, but as a mangled pile of wood and bricks with broken eye-windows. DJ then takes the dynamite and climbs with Jenny to the top of a crane to throw the stick down the house's chimney. As they attempt to do it, DJ is scared and doesn't think he can do it, but Jenny kisses him to encourage him.

DJ falls from the crane, clinging to the hook at the end of the cable. As he swings forth he throws the dynamite down the chimney, and as he swings back he grabs Chowder who was being attacked below, and they jump into a trench to protect from the explosion which destroys the house and since the chimney was destroyed this time it doesn't regenerate as its heart is gone. As the trio reunite, they see Nebbercracker dancing with the spirit of Constance as he let goes of her and she fades away. DJ apologizes to him and Nebbercracker thanks him for freeing him and Constance.

The film ends with the kids returning to the hole where the house was, and Chowder, DJ, and Jenny helping Nebbercracker return all the toys the house had taken from kids. Jenny is then picked up by her parents and she says that they should hang together again sometime. Chowder gets his ball back from Nebbercracker and after playing ball for a minute the two decide to go trick-or-treating after all.

During the credits, it is shown that everyone that was eaten by the house, including the dog, steps out of the basement bewildered but unharmed, and that Bones and Zee are not together anymore, since she has decided to go out with Skull. Bones doesn't care, as he has his long-lost kite back. Officers Landers and Lister decide to spend the rest of the night "inspecting" candy to shake off their little "experience" of being eaten. In the end, the house comes back to life, reminiscent of the conclusion to Clive Barker's "The Thief of Always."

Meet the Robinsons

A young woman leaves her baby boy on the steps of an orphanage. Twelve years later, Lewis (Daniel Hansen and Jordan Fry), the baby, has yet to be adopted. Confident that his birth mother abandoned him against her will, he attempts to invent a memory-scanner that will allow him to remember his mother in the hopes that he can find her. He keeps his roommate, Mike "Goob" Yagoobian (Matthew Josten), up every night working, which causes Goob’s Little League baseball team’s performance to suffer. Goob attempts to be supportive but is finding things more and more difficult himself.

At Lewis’s school science fair, Inventco. representative Dr. Krunkelhorn (Laurie Metcalf) is judging the event. Lewis is approached by a thirteen-year-old boy named Wilbur Robinson (Wesley Singerman), who claims that he is a "time cop" from the future, and that a man wearing a bowler hat stole a time machine. The sinister Bowler Hat Guy (Stephen Anderson), for whom Wilbur is searching, sends Doris (Ethan Sandler), a robotic hat with mechanical arms, to sabotage Lewis’s machine. As Lewis begins demonstrating his machine, it explodes, throwing the science fair into chaos. Lewis runs out, leaving his machine, and Bowler Hat Guy steals the memory scanner.

At the orphanage, Lewis goes to the roof, crushed by his "failure". Wilbur appears and tells Lewis to go back to the science fair and fix the machine. Lewis agrees, under the condition that Wilbur proves he is from the future. Wilbur then takes Lewis to a flying time machine, and uses it to take them to the year 2037, thirty years forward.

In 2037, Wilbur takes Lewis to the garage where Wilbur tells the house robot Carl (Harland Williams). Lewis meets Wilbur's grandfather, Bud (Steve Anderson). Bud takes Lewis on a tour of the house, during which Lewis meets the rest of the strange and fun-loving and overly-eccentric Robinson family, ranging from Wilbur’s friendly mother Franny (Nicole Sullivan), the family's squid-like butler Lefty (Nathan Greno), Bud's wife Lucille, Uncle Fritz and his "wife" Aunt Petunia (both voiced by Ethan Sandler), their children Talula (Steve Anderson) and Laszlo (Ethan Sandler), lazy Uncle Joe and his wife Aunt Billie (Kellie M. Hoover), and twin uncles Spike and Dimitri (both voiced by Ethan Sandler) as well as daredevil Uncle Gaston (Don Hall) and intergalactic super pizza guy Uncle Art (Adam West) whom are Franny's brothers. Assured that no one Lewis met knows that he’s from the past, a relieved Wilbur explains that his father, Cornelius, the only member of the Robinson family that Lewis did not meet, invented practically everything Lewis has witnessed, coining the motto "Keep moving forward". Together, and with the help of the large and multi-talented Robinson family, Wilbur and Lewis have to overcome the menace to the future posed by the time-machine-stealing Bowler Hat Guy and DOR-15 (aka Doris - the bowler hat) in order to ensure that the utopian future that the Robinsons live in will come to pass - and so that Wilbur will take Lewis to see his mother. After failing to kidnap Lewis with a Mini-Doris possessing one of Franny's frogs, Bowler Hat Guy uses the time machine to bring back a Tyrannosaurus named Tiny (Joe Mateo) to abduct Lewis. After it was defeated, Lewis' secret was revealed as Wilbur explains that the Bowler Hat Guy broke into the garage that had the time machine Cornelius Robinson invented. As Lewis runs away knowing that Wilbur wouldn't uphold his promise, Franny grounds Wilbur for his actions. Lewis runs into the Bowler Hat Guy who abducts him before Wilbur can bring him back.

At the abandoned orphanage, the Bowler Hat Guy reveals himself as an aged and deeply bitter Goob. He then proceeds to tell Lewis what had happened: Having been kept up all night from Lewis' inventing, Goob was unable to stay awake during the big game. Thus missing the winning catch. The resulting inner anger inside of him had kept him from making friends or finding a family, so he simply stayed in the orphanage (even after it had closed down) for 30 years.

It was after those 30 years that Goob adopted the belief that it wasn't his fault; it was Lewis'. So he concocted a plan to gain his revenge...by throwing eggs at the Robinson Indistries building entrence. It was then that he met DOR-15, a future invention of Lewis' that went horribly wrong. Both of them had a score to settle with Lewis, so they waited untill the right time to strike (Ironically, they were able to acquire the time machine when Wilbur had left the garage door open).

The Bowler Hat Guy and DOR-15 then take Lewis to the roof of the orphanage and prepare to present "Their" invention to Invent Co. Wilbur and Carl save him but Carl is killed by Doris, who retrieves the memory scanner. The Bowler Hat Guy then says "Take a good look around boys because your future's about to CHANGE!" then leaves, laughing wickedly.

What follows is a montage of Wilbur trying to encourage Lewis to fix the broken time machine and the Bowler Hat Guy presenting the memory scanner (and Doris).

The Bowler Hat Guy suceeds and Wilbur is erased from existance. Unfortunately, the future is horrifyingly altered where DOR-15 and the helping hats control the world....something he did not intend at all.

Dodging the controlled Robinson family, a giant spider-legged bowler hat, and several smaller hats, Lewis fixes and uses the time machine to go to the brecise moment and location where the Bowler Hat Guy signs the contract and doomes humanity. He tells him that, once she has what she wants, Doris will get rid of him. Doris tries to kill Lewis, but he merely says "I will NEVER invent you!", which causes the hat to vanish into oblivion.

Lewis then shows him Doris' future, which is transformed into the utopian future. After they land near the Robinson house, Wilbur is put back into existance. He attacks the Bowler Hat Guy at first, but is convinced by Lewis that they shoud adopt him. However, having seen the horror he had caused, the Bowler Hat Guy runs away in shame and is unsure what to do next.

After returning to the Robinson's aboad, they thank Lewis for fixing the future. Just then, Cornelius (voice of Tom Selleck) finally comes home and is discovered that he is actually an adult version of Lewis. He does allow Wilbur to take Lewis to when his mother left him at the orphanage. Lewis says his goodbyes to the Robinsons and their new pet Tiny. Though wanting to know her, Lewis changes his mind and returns to the past. With his memory scanner, Lewis heads to the school yet manages to wake 'Goob' up in time to make the catch, causing him to win the game, and ensuring him a better future. At the science fair, his memory scanner is successful upon Dr. Krunklehorn as Lewis discovers that she's married to who would later be Grandpa Bud and one of his classmates is a younger Franny. Lewis allows Dr. Krunklehorn and Bud to adopt him as he starts to live up to his future family's legacy.