More dumb, threadbare gender stuff. If it weren’t for the fact that Disney cartoons are all anthropomorphic, and that this one’s zoological rigour ends with physiology, you might argue that these creatures are just acting like animals. But even if that were true, that would still be the precise problem. The portrayal of bullying brawn reinforces all sorts of negative patterns, for all the smarmy, still gender-threadbare resolutions they eventually contrive. (Mind you, the photograph of the caddish Rooster with his actual family is both bold and effective. And funny.) And if you were to remove the chest-beating component, the ostensibly positive male/female interactions that stand in contrast are just as harmful. It’s the usual Bambi, Make Mine Music stuff—the girls manipulate, provoke and then withdraw, while the boys slaver. Not the kind of thing I want my kids seeing, at least without having a discussion about it! Once again, movies produced for families can be still inappropriate in all sorts of ways. Mind you, there is some superb dancing going on, Busby Berkeley-derived stuff that works as parody and actuality both.