Review of Chicken Run (2000) by Halfwelshman — 24 Jun 2012

I hadn't seen Chicken Run for a few years and had honestly forgotten how much there is to it - it's far more than a film for kids about rebellious poultry! It's like a weird hybrid of The Great Escape, The Shawshank Redemption and Spartacus, but with animated chickens.

It really shouldn't work, but thanks to the genius of co-writers/directors Nick Park and Peter Lord it somehow does. The premise is truly fantastic, after all what animal would dream more of freedom than a farmed chicken? The film has a great cast of interesting characters - Ginger the hyper-intelligent idealist (Julia Sawalha), Bunty the cynical and bad-tempered pragmatist (Imelda Staunton), Babs the constantly knitting, rather dim eternal optimist (Jane Horrocks), Rocky the charming con-artist (Mel Gibson), Mrs Tweedy the wealth-hungry social climber (Miranda Richardson) and the farmer Mr Tweedy, who is convinced he is losing his mind for suspecting that "those chickens are up to something" (Tony Haygarth).

Though the stop-motion animation quality is such that you can tell what each character is thinking without the need for dialogue, the whole cast give great vocal performances, particularly Sawalha, who gives the story its dramatic weight, Horrocks who is hilarious as always and Richardson who is just plain terrifying.

The film has some pretty big themes for an animation about talking chickens - liberty vs. slavery, mechanisation of agriculture, American vs. British politics and the shallowness of modern celebrity culture.

Chicken Run is also incredibly funny, with humour ranging from visual gags (an Aardman speciality), puns ("the lone free ranger"), pop culture references (Braveheart, Indiana Jones, Star Trek) and quintessentially British comic sensibilities.

There's also an exhilarating and visually clever set piece that takes place inside a pie-making machine and a few particularly affecting and surprisingly dark moments such as when the chickens contemplate their own mortality and Babs starts to knit herself a noose.

Finally, Chicken Run is an affectionate love-letter to the North of England. Looking at the characters' accents and mannerisms, and especially the beautifully re-created landscapes of the film, you could say that if Wallace and Gromit is Aardman's tribute to the county of Lancashire, then Chicken Run is the studio's tribute to the county of Yorkshire.

We've seen so much brilliant examples of animation from all over the world in the last two decades, but even so, I would suggest Chicken Run is not only the best film Aardman have produced, but that it is also one of the finest examples of British animation the world has ever seen.

It's a tragically rare occasion in this day and age that live-action filmmaking is this entertaining, smart, well-balanced and emotionally rewarding. Chicken Run ticks all the boxes, and does so using funny-looking plasticine chickens, a real achievement indeed.