Chicken Run

Those fans of the Wallace and Gromit shorts, rejoice. If you've been wondering what Nick Park, the creator of those Aardman adventures, has been doing for the past couple of years, you can finally see it. It's Chicken Run, the DreamWorks claymation family film. Only DreamWorks, in its beginning years as a major studio, would finance such a project, as it is so clearly a risk. When Jerry Katzenberg helped create the fledgling studio, he envisioned success like he had at Disney making such films as Lion King and Aladdin. Chicken Run won't do better business than those Disney classics, but I'll be damned if it's not a better film.

Without question, Chicken Run is the finest film ever made about poultry. It's a story about what its like being a chicken, having to lay eggs for a living and just walking around inside your hen home, pecking away at the little bits of chickenfeed. It's about what happens when you don't lay enough eggs, and about the struggles that chickens have when they try to escape their depressive existence. You think chickens don't have thoughts of escaping?

The film had me hooked right at the beginning. It's a bravura opening ten minutes, showing us the trials and tribulations of Ginger, a heroic young chicken. She's trying to escape the chicken farm. She tries every night, only to fail and try again the next night. Her attempts are courageous, and her bravery earns her respect throughout the farm. We see her dashing about, diving underneath fences, dodging the clench of a dog's sharp teeth, only to be confronted by Mr. Tweedy and his scouting flashlight shining in her face. She's been caught... again...

But, why is she so desperate to leave? We see soon enough. Like the military, roll call is called, and the chickens line up in organized fashion. They're scanned over by the tyrannical Mrs. Tweedy. She looks at her list of who has been productive in laying eggs. One hen hasn't laid one all week. With a chop of an axe, frightful looks from the rest of the hens, gasps from the theater audience followed by a hushed silence, we instantly realize the chicken's predicament. They need to escape. Quickly.

The action scenes, most notably a rescue attempt inside of a gigantic machine, are pure kinetic joy. The animation is so spectacular, that you quickly forget that they constructed these scenes frame by frame. That's right. Every frame had to be altered slightly so the next snapshot could reflect movement. Imagine the time and care that would take. The action scenes are edited together so nicely that it's hard to imagine them being constructed on miniature sets of clay.

Chicken Run has much the same elements of humor that Toy Story and Toy Story 2 have. There are moments of obvious humor, and the jokes are outright hilarious. What's especially notable about the humor of Chicken Run are the little things. The little blinks of an eye, the collapse of a friend in the background, the muttering of sarcastic comments under another chicken's breath. The little things put this film on a whole different level. The humor has an often startling amount of cleverness associated with it, just like Pixar's classics.

The performances all around rank as some of the best I've ever heard in an animated film. Mel Gibson, whose role is slightly smaller than I expected, is great. But it's the voice of Ginger who supplies the film with it's most endearing impact. She requires jobs in the future as a voice for animated characters onscreen. The rest of the cast is just as brilliant; whether it be the voice of a former RAF pilot, brilliant physics chicken, or of the many hens who are left ogling over Rocky (Mel Gibson's chicken).

You need to see Chicken Run. I guarantee you'll have a good time. Can you say best family film of the year? All together now: "Chicken Run is the best family film of the year."

On a scale of 1 to 10 chickadee babies : 8