Review of Chicken Run (2000) by Jacob M — 25 Jul 2013

"No chicken escapes from Tweedy's farm!".

Aardman Animations is a small, British animation studio known for making claymated shorts about the duo Wallace and Gromit, the inventor and dog. For the studio's first animated film, Aardman teamed up with rising studio DreamWorks and created Chicken Run, a claymated feature that's full of humor, heart, and adventure.

Chicken Run is about a group of chickens who spend their life on the farm laying eggs and eating chicken feed. One chicken, Ginger, is fed up with this life and wants to escape from the farm. The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy, are fed up with raising chickens, so they plot to kill them off by turning them into chicken pies and making a profit out of it. Ginger, knowing something's up, teams up with an American rooster named Rocky and convinces the other chickens to escape from the farm before they become pies.

Claymation has existed in film since the early days of sound, helping the effects in films like King Kong, Jason and the Argonauts, and the original Clash of the Titans. Claymation is a long, hard process to make and sometimes, it takes a whole day to create two seconds of character movement. In Chicken Run, it looks like the creators made it easy (but not really), making the Claymation stunning to look at and the background an impressive wonder.

Chicken Run is a comedy, and the humor is brilliant as well. Every chicken in this film has a wonderful personality in them. There's Ginger, the mastermind of the chicken escape, there's Mac, the chicken with a brain, there's Fowler, the British chicken with military experience, and Babs, a chicken with an addiction to knitting. Mel Gibson voices Rocky the rooster, and has some memorable dialogue in him. The villains are also funny and have some excellent slapstick chemistry in them.

While the idea of chickens escaping from a farm is really original, some portions of the film do sound familiar. When making Chicken Run, it was obvious that the creators were inspired by The Great Escape, and there are some clear references to the film (Ginger is in a "cooler" playing with a tennis ball). In the well-made sequences in the pie-making machine, there's a funny reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I won't give away for those who haven't seen it. In animated films, pop-culture references are a hit-and-miss, and in Chicken Run, the references work, and do not dominate the picture like in later DreamWorks films.

The score by animation regular John Powell is good. While felling reminiscent of The Great Escape (man, the opening-credits theme sounds awfully familiar), I enjoyed what I heard and the score is a good listen too.

Also, Chicken Run delights in it's action sequences. Besides the well-made oven scene, the climax involving the chickens "great escape" is spectacular and shows how talented the creators did in making such difficult animation.

Chicken Run is fun, with brilliant humor, spectacular action sequences, and memorable characters. While the story sounds familiar in places, Chicken Run takes the references of The Great Escape and puts a familiar story in its own way. If you have not seen an Aardman film in your life, start with this one. It's a good film.

"I saw my life flash before me eyes. It was very boring.".