Galline in fuga

CHICKEN RUN / (2000) ***1/2 (out of four)

"Chicken Run," DreamWorks Picture's newest animation festival, is an old-fashioned fairy tale with more heart and truth than most movies can even imagine about containing. The film's animated style contains state-of-the-art clay-animation techniques, which make it worth the trip to the multiplex just for feasting your eyes on such brilliant special effects. Directors Peter Lord and Nick Park, with co-writer Karey Kirkpatrick, give the characters depth, reason, and dimension-even if the main star is a feathered farm animal that converges with his companions about political matters.

"Chicken Run" details the miserable lives of a clan of chickens being withheld within a sinister dairy farm in 1950's England. Ginger (voiced by Miranda Richardson) is the central character, who, along with her acquaintances, deeply lust for the sweet smell of freedom that lies beyond the constricting boundaries of their pens. The unhappy farm owners, the smart and devious Mrs. Tweedy and the dumb and precarious Mr. Tweedy, brutally dispose of chickens who fail to produce the amount of eggs they require.

When a overzealous circus Rooster named Rocky (voiced by Mel Gibson) stumbles onto the farm one evening, the other chickens blackmail him into teaching them how to escape. This is also when the Tweetys lurch up a devilish new plan to strike it rich by purchasing a machine that will turn innocent chickens into merchandising pot pies.

The film's plot is steady, solid, and knowing; it portrays a series of events that gradually build tension eventually inducing an exciting climax that is both conclusive and satisfying. "Chicken Run" is a precise piece of filmmaking, an inoffensive family adventure that will entertain audiences of all ages.

Regardless of how well crafted it is or how artful the material, the movie is about chickens escaping out of their pen in order to find genuine independence. No, the stakes are not nearly high enough, and with a plot like this, it is only natural for some audiences to expect a shallow, cheap cartoon publicity stunt. However, the filmmakers make this movie feel original, fresh, suspenseful, and involving, regardless if the main characters are chickens with patriotic instincts.

Watching Peter Lord and Nick Park's glorious animation story of a group of chickens escaping from a repressive farm in 1950s Britain, one comes to understand how the script draws on a whole raft of classic war films of the period, including THE COLDITZ STORY (1955), STALAG 17 (1953), and most obviously THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963).

All of the elements are there, treated with a tongue-in-cheek reverence that makes the film a memorable experience. Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha) is the lead chicken, desperately trying to devise escape plans from the farm policed by Mr. Tweedy (Tony Haygarth) and his shrewish spouse (Miranda Richardson). The need to escape is paramount; all the chickens have to hope for instead is a life dedicated to laying eggs and a violent death by strangulation, as the Tweedies cook yet another tasty Sunday dinner. The only problem is that Ginger's task is hampered by the well-meaning yet rather clueless inmates, led by Babs (Jane Horrocks) and Mac (Lynn Ferguson). The entire group are 'supervised' (?) by the Brigadier Fowler (Benjamin Whitrow), using the kind of Fifties Received Pronunciation accent that immediately recalls the war films of that period.

Enter Rocky the Rooster (Mel Gibson), a self-assured refugee from the circus, with a cockiness (pun intended) recalling Steve McQueen in THE GREAT ESCAPE. Although eventually helping to create a successful escape, Rocky has to learn how to co-exist with a group of Brits, that requires both races to become more accommodating, and less xenophobic. The script allows for some jokes familiar to viewers acquainted with World War II history (all Americans are "overpaid, oversexed, and over here."

Although only just over eighty minutes long, the film is packed with incident as well as some really funny jokes. CHICKEN RUN is a joyous experience, a tribute both to the talents of animators and script-writers alike.

The great animation director Chuck Jones has often stated that his cartoons "weren't made for children. Neither were they made for adults. They were made for me." Jones's seven-minute shorts were made on a far lower budget than the animated features of today. With features, much more money is at stake, as well as the livelihoods of more people. Because of the pressure to make back the investment, animated features can give an impression of being created by committee, as though tailored to fit some committee's idea of a prefabricated audience segment. It's remarkable, then, that Aardman Animation's "Chicken Run" shows off so much personality, the mark of a film made not for an imagined mass audience, but because it satisfied some need for the filmmakers-besides the need to put food on the table, that is.

The story revolves around an English egg farm designed a lot like a WWII-era prison camp, with overtones of the Nazi concentration camps as well, in that chickens that don't produce end up as dinner. While most of the chickens are resigned to their fate, one plucky hen named Ginger keeps leading escape attempts and keeps getting locked in "solitary" for her pains. Her task takes on new urgency when the Tweedys (the couple who run the farm) prepare to convert their operation into a chicken-pie factory. Hope arrives in the form of an American known (amusingly, in view of the recent "Rocky & Bullwinkle" film) as "Rocky the Flying Rooster", whom Ginger thinks can teach the chickens how to fly. Naturally, Rocky isn't really what he seems to be, and the revelation of his secret threatens to dash all hope of escape, because everyone knows chickens can't fly-or can they?

Unlike most cartoon films, "Chicken Run" is animated using clay figures in stop-motion. While this process involves much more labor than drawn animation, it also makes easier the use of many of the tools of live-action filmmaking, such as dramatic lighting and moving camera work. Directors Peter Lord and Nick Park both have considerable experience in this field, Park with "Creature Comforts" and the "Wallace & Gromit" series (perhaps the most popular animated shorts of the 1990's) and Lord as a co-founder (with David Sproxton) of Aardman and director of such shorts as "Adam", "Wat's Pig", and "Early Bird".

The look of "Chicken Run" displays a harmonious blending of Park's and Lord's strengths; the character designs have the cartoony look of Park's work, while the more realistic settings and backdrops (which appear subject to grime and weathering) are typical of those in Lord's films. All the major characters are distinctive and believable on their own terms; even the numerous chickens have their own distinct looks and voices. The only times the illusion of believability fails are when a clay chicken collides with a metal fence; I half expect to see the clay figure sliced up on the way through. (This may be a personal reaction, conditioned by years of exposure to "Tom & Jerry" and "Roadrunner/Coyote" cartoons.) The story moves efficiently and contains much humor and detail that reward close attention, as well as bravura set-pieces such as Rocky and Ginger's dramatic encounter with the Tweedys' pie machine.

While it has justifiably been compared with military prison-camp escape movies such as "Stalag 17" and "The Great Escape", as well as with the revisionist farm-animal melodrama "Babe", the movie "Chicken Run" resembles most is Pixar's computer-animated "A Bug's Life". The resemblence lies partly in certain details of plot (such as the hero[es] who isn't/aren't what he/they seem to be) but mostly in the nature of the story itself. While human prisoners have a life before prison upon which to look back upon, the chickens in this movie have never known such freedom. Thus, when Ginger talks of escape, she not only urges them to change their location but their entire way of thinking. In chicken terms, this is a radical message, the same one put forth by all the great human radical organizers: that those who are exploited have a right to expect a better life. Though the species and the methods of exploitation are different, "A Bug's Life" shares this revolutionary message (with Flik playing the radical visionary part). Both movies also stress the importance of banding together against oppressors whose power turns out to be more apparent than real.

While one could quibble about such commonalities, I'm impressed that two such films exist at all, that they were funded by major Hollywood studios (Disney for "A Bug's Life", Dreamworks for "Chicken Run"), and that kids love them and parents don't mind watching them more than once. One wonders if the parents know exactly what it is they're watching, and letting their kids watch. Then again, maybe they, too, believe they and their children deserve better lives, and enjoy seeing fellow victims of exploitation get such a life in the end.

Chicken Run is a wonderfully entertaining movie for EVERYONE! Kids will love the eye-candy of chickens doing absurd things and tossing off silly one-liners. Adults will enjoy the brilliantly funny dialogue and the sweet, engaging story. Parents will enjoy taking their kids to a movie that does not have the Disneyesque product tie-ins and must-buy soundtrack. Movie buffs can try to count the references to The Great Escape, Stalg 17, Star Trek and Braveheart and may be pleasantly surprised at the quality of the camera work.

Nick Park, Peter Lord & Co. succeeded (where so many other have failed recently) in making an animated movie whose story, plot and dialogue are equal to the brilliant animation. In the wordless opening minutes we are engaged and in invited to care about these silly chickens. By the time the snappy dialogue gets rolling we've already identified with the chickens' plight. It may be a bit slow through the middle for the younger moviegoers. But the sound of laughter, cheers and applause from the whole audience as the chickens make their final bid for freedom is well worth the wait. The only sad part is we may have to wait another five years for another Aardman Animations to produce another picture of the quality.

'Chicken Run' is a delighted little film about...well, chickens. I've always loved the claymation of Aardman. 'Creature Comforts' and 'Wallace and Gromit' are among many of my favorites. Aardman Studios have come up with a brilliant cast, a funny and smart script, fine cinematography and production design. The inspiration of films like 'The Great Escape' shows. The female characters are so strong and yet they have their own sense of humour and Brit-wit. Aardman's claymation is splendid. The large eyes, body size and shape and movements create this a unique class of comedy. The writing is very sharp and crisp but I disliked the obvious symbolism (of British and America joining hands to save the world and fight evil) which looked a little forced. I don't see the need to make the Rocky character an American rooster (as if it's an ingredient to have an American on board). Yet, that does not take away the sheer pleasure and entertainment one derives from the film. The voice cast is suitably chosen. Gibson plays the typical hero with charisma but it's the Brit cast, which includes names like Imelda Staunton, Lynn Ferguson, Jane Horrocks and Julia Sawalha that did it for me. Their sharp witty humour and strong will just put them on a league of their own. 'Chicken Run' is a cute, heartwarming, uplifting and hilarious little film. To quote another user, it is eggcellent!