Chicken Run
(2000)
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Facing imminent death while laying eggs at Tweedy's English farm, a group of chickens led by the determined Ginger (Julia Sawahla, BBC-TV's ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS) plan to escape their prisonlike coop. The situation goes from bad to worse when the sinister Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) decides to stop selling eggs and use the hens as the main ingredient in chicken pot pies. However, some hope literally falls from the sky in the form of Rocky (Mel Gibson), an American rooster who promises to teach the chickens how to fly. As the hens begin their struggle to get airborne, the monstrous pie-making machine arrives, giving the chickens precious little time to make their great escape. |
Four years in the making and easily the most ambitious project yet undertaken by the award-laden Aardman Animation unit, this feathered pastiche of PoW classics such as The Great Escape and Stalag 17 is an awesome achievement by consummate film-makers. Rocky, a “lone free-ranger” rooster, promises to help the hens in Mr and Mrs Tweedy's high-security egg farm find a way to freedom. The nods to classic film moments are funny and plentiful, the largely British voice cast (Julia Sawalha, Jane Horrocks, Miranda Richardson, Timothy Spall) lends moments of humour and pathos, and the set pieces are exhilarating in their ingenuity and comic élan. The need to justify Mel Gibson's vocal presence as Rocky slows the pace occasionally, but this is still a soaring flight of fancy.
Halliwell's Film Guide
In part a parody of prisoner-of-war films such as The Great Escape, which will mean little to its intended audience, this gradually develops a comic momentum and absurdity all of its own, with a quaint handmade charm that proves irrestible.