Chicken Run Review
by "Alex Ioshpe" (ioshpe AT online DOT no)October 12th, 2000
DIRECTED BY: Nick Park and Peter Lord
WRITTEN BY: Nick Park and Peter Lord
CAST: Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha, Lynn Ferguson, Miranda Richardson, Tony Haygarth
Runtime: USA:84
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RATING: 10/10
Dream Works is back! This time with a brilliant animated feature that
might very well be the comedy of the year. From the its first shot,
when a "chicken-ghetto" is shown, lit up by the pale moon, you'll
start chuckling. And when Mel Gibson's (Braveheart) Rocky flies over
it, screaming "FREEDOM", you'll be laughing so hard that you'll get a nosebleed. The reason for that 'Chicken Run' is so successful is that
the talented Park and Lord found a perfect balance between drama,
satire and comedy. It is much more demanding and intelligent than most
of the stereotype cartoons produced by Disney evey year, and a lot
funnier than Disney's mega-hit "Toy Story 2".
The setting is the Tweedy's, a dank little chicken farm in Yorkshire,
England, populated mostly by hens and a few old roosters who are
living on borrowed time, slowly awaiting their doom. They are under
the mercy of Mrs. Tweedy, a Nazilike woman (voiced by Miranda
Richardson), who demands nothing less than productivity from her
prisoners in the form of eggs and more eggs. But even when her hens
lay eggs at a high rate, it isn't enough for her. The chickens are
helpless, slowly awaiting their doom. Some know, some suspect and
others do not believe it. Only Ginger, a determined feisty hen with a
temper, is trying to escape. She dreams of wild open spaces, freedom
and release from fear. There doesn't go a day by, without her trying
and failing in her escape. But soon she realizes that there is no way
of getting of this farm alive. But everything changes when an upstart
Yank literally falls into the hens' midst. Rocky the Flying Rooster,
the self-described "lone free-ranger," has made his living being shot
from a cannon at a circus. On the lam from his owner, Rocky takes
convenient refuge on the farm and does nothing to discourage the idea
that he can fly, which allows Ginger to pin all her hopes for a mass
escape on Rocky's teaching the girls how to get airborne. At the same
time, however, Mrs. Tweedy, fed up with the "minuscule profits" from
eggs, decides to build a terrible pie-making machine, which works very
simple -- "chickens come in, pies come out". Soon a dark smoke is
forcing itself from old pipes....
The confining, prison-like setting, which is rarely left during the
film, seems to have placed a sort of dramatic straitjacket on the
filmmakers' impulse for nifty side trips and surprising
digressions. It is a rather risky attempt to paradise the World War II
prison camp thrillers. "Chicken Run" is a holocaust movie about, well, chickens. It's a very smart film, very alert, but it's also incredibly
dark film - an allegory disguised as a cartoon that comments on, among
other things, our dog-eat-dog society, greed, ruthlessness and
cruelty. The characters, all chickens, are jailed, exploited and
tortured by humans if they don't cooperate - and are sent to the ovens
if they don't reach the daily quota of eggs.
Everything second of what you see on screen is many days of hard
work. Every element is made of Plasticine, which means that the
directors had to move the figures manually for every little
movement. And since there are 24 movements per second, you can imagine
why this film took such a long time to complete. This technique is
very demanding, but it gives the directors complete control. Because
of that there are no accidents, mistakes or surprises during the
production. The good thing is that the enormous efforts have paid
off. Everything is perfect. The figures look like as they have been
made by children - sweet, cartoonish and innocent. The small details
in "set decoration" are incredible. Like 'Antz', 'Chicken Run' is a
film that plays on several levels, and the more you know about
history, films and politics, the more will you enjoy the film. But as
it showed out 'Antz' was more appreciated by adults, rather than
children. 'Chicken Run' on the other hand, despite of its darker
tones, isn't that heavy and thus offers an equal amount of quality entertainment for children as well as adults. The dialogue is wisely structured, with incredibly amusing characters and brilliant parodies
on famous Hollywood productions, that are elegantly floating into each
other, creating a bright, comic cocktail.
To be sure, "Chicken Run" is always engaging, full of bright humor,
marvelous stop-motion work with Plasticine figures, dramatic conflict
and wonderfully nuanced characterizations. Indeed, the leading
characters are given unusually fine shadings for animated creations,
which is partly a tribute to the Aardman team's finesse and partly due
to the outstanding casting and performances. Mel Gibson delivers an
energetic at times self ironic performance, and of course "Braveheart"
is not excluded. The rest of the cast consists of marvelous actors,
such as Julia Sawalha and ______ as the proud, elderly chicken
general. With their clipped British voices, the hens are like women in
a World War II POW flick (Glenn Close's recent "Paradise Road" comes
to mind). The Tweedy farm looking like something out of Steven
Spielberg's "Schindler's List" (1993), with chicken coops resembling
bunkers and fencing topped with barbed wire. Before our disbelieving
eyes, a pageant of jeopardy, romance and rescue unfolds. Chickens
yelling, "She's gonna blow," chickens jitter-bugging to the classic
"Flip Flop and Fly," chickens creating the kind of rousing action
finale John Woo would relish. The film is funny, without trying too
hard and emotional, without over dramatizing. It's the example of a
perfect film, that should be followed by the producers and directors
of Walt Disney Pictures. I simply can't imagine someone not enjoying
this film. It offers more than enough for any audience member. And let
me put it even more strait -- it's enough to become a vegetarian...for
life!
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