Chicken Run (2000)

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Keep track of how many people tell you in the next few weeks that they’ve been “fans of Aardman’s stuff for a long time.” The numbers will likely hit double digits, since every family who walks into Chicken Run, the first full-length feature from the celebrated British animation studio which created Wallace and Gromit, will come out begging for more.

After months of anxious anticipation among Aardman’s fans, Chicken Run has finally hatched. All those who feared the film would be sub par which in Aardman’s case would be anything short of “nearly flawless” can breathe easy. Chicken Run is, without a doubt, the best family movie of the summer. Helmed by Aardman’s heart and soul duo Nick Park (thrice-Oscar’d creator of the short film Creature Comforts) and Peter Lord (Aardman’s founding animator), this fowl minded adventure soars on a blend of quirky wit and animation so natural looking, you forget you’re watching talking lumps of clay.

Playing like a prisoner of war thriller set on a poultry farm (The Great Egg-scape?), Chicken Run follows a group of hens struggling to fly the coop after their owners, Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy, switch from selling eggs to cooking chicken pies. Even though they’re led by the extraordinarily plucky hen Ginger (voiced by Absolutely Fabulous’ Saffron, aka Julia Sawalha), the chickens of Coop 17 still manage to blow one escape attempt after another. But when a “flying” American rooster named Rocky (Mel Gibson) drops in from a traveling circus, Ginger is convinced that freedom is just a few wing flaps away, and hatches a new plan.

This simple premise is the core of a story that’s both an homage to classic P.O.W. films and gleefully subversive family entertainment (when’s the last time an action adventure film had a nearly all female cast?). It also provides Park and Lord with plenty of opportunities to dazzle audiences with their celebrated visual prestidigitation, most impressively during Rocky’s hair raising rescue of Ginger from an industrial chicken pie maker, a sequence involving Indiana Jones style heroics, vicious looking machinery, and about three tons of gravy.

Aside from a handful of spectacular action set pieces, Chicken Run is also an animated work of remarkable subtlety and expression. As do all three Wallace and Gromit adventures (A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave), Chicken Run has an understated beauty and charm that’s more than clay deep. During every stilted pause and moment of hand wringing uncertainty, the writer directors reflect the human experience through our feathered heroes with disarming authenticity. The lead characters may sport plasticene cockscombs, but they are all too human, allowing empathy to bridge the cultural divide between American audiences and the veddy British hens on screen.

Beyond the characters themselves, Park and Lord’s obsession with detail defines the Aardman approach. For example, the prim dress worn by the menacing Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) bears a chicken-foot pattern, and the perpetually knitting hen Babs’ (Jane Horrocks, also of AbFab fame) needlecraft was actually knitted using toothpicks. Younger children may not notice these minutiae, but parents unfamiliar with Aardman’s past work will appreciate such subtle touches. When Aardman’s eye for detail and virtuoso animation is matched with the inventive and sly screenplay (which references movies ranging from Stalag 17 to Star Wars), the result is a children’s film that earns a place on the “timeless classic” shelf next to A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, and The Iron Giant.

Most refreshingly, Chicken Run sidesteps the “fairy tale” genre entirely. This is a tale of toil, sacrifice, and hard earned victory without a speck of fairy dust or dreamy eyed fantasy. And though it offers lessons in responsibility, honesty, loyalty, and tenacity, these potentially high flown messages are handled with a feather light touch. With an understated approach, nostalgic feel, and unapologetically British sensibilities (which make it an ideal first “foreign film” for human hatchlings), Chicken Run is a golden egg in a nest full of overblown blockbusters.

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Also watch

• The China Syndrome (1979)
• The Children Are Watching Us (1944)
• Children of Paradise (1945)
• Chicago (2002)
• Chinatown (1974)