Reviews for Chicken Run

Even in this age of high-tech CGI, there is something irreplaceable about old-fashioned stop-motion animation, in which carefully-crafted puppets and props are photographed on miniature sets, one painstaking frame of film at a time. Britain's Aardman Animation has been a champion of this art for some years, but only now have they finally released their first feature-length film, directed by studio vets Peter Lord and Nick Park. The result is the charming, thrilling, thoroughly delightful "Chicken Run."

Tweedy's Farm, a gloomy tract in the Yorkshire Dales, looks like a POW camp from a World War II adventure yarn, with rows of numbered chicken huts surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by guard dogs. The hens are expected to lay eggs, and the ones who don't produce end up as dinner. Ginger, our red-feathered heroine, believes there must be a better life than this, but her attempts to get herself, and the rest of the flock, past the fences to freedom repeatedly fail – landing her in "solitary" (the Tweedys' coal bin). She's on the verge of giving up, when salvation drops from the sky in the form of Rocky ("the Rhode Island Red – Rhodes for short"), an escaped circus performer billed on the tattered poster that comes down with him as "The Flying Rooster." Inspired, Ginger makes the smooth-talking American a deal: she'll hide him from the Circus boss if he'll teach her and the other hens to fly. It soon becomes apparent that time is running out for Ginger and company, for Mrs. Tweedy, who rules the roost, has invested in a monstrous automated pie-making machine. No more petty egg collecting and miniscule profits for her; she's going to get rich as the Chicken Pot Pie Queen of England. To explain any more of the plot would be "spoiling." Suffice it to say, there's a rousing swing-dance number as Rocky gets the girls to loosen up, and a couple of terrific action set-pieces, including a wild ride through the inner workings of the pie machine. The final, climactic escape is breathtaking and inventive, somewhat in line with John Lasseter's features with Pixar in terms of surprise twists, narrow escapes, applause-prompting heroics, and a poetically just fate for the wicked.

Stop-motion animation, with its handmade charm and tactile reality, is perfectly suited to this sort of clever, whimsical storytelling, and the film is chock-full of little visual details that require multiple viewings to catch. What makes "Chicken Run " really worthwhile, however, are the charming, well-realized characters, and the layers and layers of humor built around them. The voice cast, top to bottom, is better than terrific, and let this be a lesson to the Hollywood studios that you don't need Big Celebrities to sell an animated film. With the single exception of Mel Gibson, who does a funny, self-mocking turn as Rocky, the actors won't be familiar to non-Anglophile American moviegoers, but they turn in some wonderful performances. Julia Sawalha was born to do voice work; she gives Ginger a natural spunk and charm that pulls the audience behind her from the get-go. Lynn Ferguson is a hoot as Mac, the Scottish Inventor hen, who rattles off rapid-fire techno-speak in a thick brogue and is eventually party to some funny Star Trek references. Timothy Spall and Phil Daniels banter, bicker, and steal everything in sight (including every scene they're in) as Nick and Fetcher, the scavenging Cockney rats, who provide the materials for Ginger's escape plans (for a price). Imelda Staunton, Jane Horrocks, and Benjamin Whitrow lend solid comic support in the chicken yard, and Tony Haygarth does a great, Yorkshire-accented turn as Mr. Tweedy, the hapless, henpecked farmer who can't convince his wife that the chickens are plotting something. Best of all is Miranda Richardson's dry, Yorkshire delivery as the bitter, brittle Mrs. Tweedy, a deliciously vile villainess who even "walks scary." Hers is the sort of performance that makes you wish the Oscars had some way of acknowledging voice work.

The script is packed with references to everything from "Stalag 17 " to "Star Wars," and you'd need a notebook and flashlight to record all the quotable dialogue. The background score by John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams is a delight, as well, with its pip-pip British marching themes. As a PS, once you see and love "Chicken Run," do yourself a favor and watch co-director Nick Park's "Wallace and Gromit " shorts, particularly the Oscar-winning "The Wrong Trousers."

I give "Chicken Run " ***** out of ***** stars. Oh, and do stay through the credits for a hilarious extra bit at the end.

I've seen this movie twice now and I'll probably go see it again before it leaves the theatre. I could probably go on and on about how great this movie is--the plot, the characters, etc. etc. but I think the most ringing endorsement I can give it is that it's the first movie in a long time where I've watched it and gotten so caught up in the movie that I wasn't watching the "animation".. okay, that's contradictory but as an obsessive animation fan that's an incredible thing for me.. to not have enough time to be bored or distracted or whatever during any part of the movie so that I start wondering about animation flow, how they did that shot, can I see a chroma-key line there.. all that nitty gritty stuff and just *enjoy* the movie.. that's an amazing thing.. particularly considering how mind-numbingly incredible the animation is in this film if you actually do try to think about how its done.

See this movie. Run--don't walk--to the theatre right now! :)