Overall Rating
  Awesome: 51.16%
Worth A Look: 34.3%
Average: 8.14%
Pretty Bad: 3.49%
Total Crap: 2.91%
11 reviews, 106 user ratings
|
|
| Chicken Run |
by Erik Childress
"The Great Chicken Escape"
|
The animation wars between the studios has been a fun topic for reporters to write about during the blockbuster seasons of summer and winter. Disney used to be the lone duck in the pond of animated blockbusters, but other studios have made their attempts to dethrone the King. Fox got some critical acclaim with Anastasia and Titan A.E. and Warner Bros. has had little success outside of Space Jam and the critical, if not box office, success of The Iron Giant. But the big studio that could, Dreamworks, has really grabbed the reigns with the terrific Antz, The Prince of Egypt and now, Chicken Run, poised to be one of the year’s favorites.Imagine the Great Escape with a cast full of chickens and you know all you need know about the story. But for aesthetic purposes, you’ve got a coup of chickens in England, living the life of produce eggs or die. None of the chickens are very happy about it, but some have come to accept their fate. Ginger is not one of those chickens. She is intent on busting out, using every method from disguise to digging tunnels. Her unsuccessful attempts lead her to eventually welcome the American rooster, Rocky, who is on the run himself. Ginger agrees to hide Rocky in exchange for flying lessons for her and her fellow hen. As the chicks welcome and equally doubt their chances for escape, their captive, Mrs. Tweedy decides to retool her failing egg operation into a chicken pie factory, cutting the window short for our heroes to get over the fence.
What’s so much fun about Chicken Run, is that it’s consistently fun. There’s not a moment for 85 minutes when you are not laughing, smiling or are excited. There’s a real wit to the writing here, with in-jokes laced (without dominating) throughout of everything from WWII escape movies (the hens occasionally meet in Hut 17) to Monty Python gags. But this is a script that calls attention to its own absurdity. We’re watching a cartoon here, so, naturally, suspension of disbelief is in full effect watching talking chickens plot elaborate escape attempts. This leads to some big laughs as Mr. Tweedy thinks he’s going crazy witnessing the chickens organize. And the biggest laugh of the picture relates to this premise for the response that patriotic chicken Fowler (who constantly recalls his days in the Royal Air Force) gives when he’s asked to fly the chickens off the farm. The action is first-rate too with a breathtaking escape from a pie machine up to the climactic final attempt at flight. Maybe it’s time that these modern-day music video graduates-to-action-films start studying animated films like Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and now Chicken Run with how to create, choreograph, and carry out action sequences. The climax of this movie is more exciting than anything in Mission: Impossible 2 or Gone in Sixty Seconds.
Using stop-motion animation here, the most amazing aspect is how Peter Lord and Nick Park (Britain’s Aardman team responsible for the amazing Wallace and Gromit shorts) manage to put so much personality and expression-filled emotion in the faces of the chickens. There is more character in these characters (especially Ginger) than the great majority of big releases that come out each year. Mel Gibson is an inspired choice to voice Rocky the Rooster, getting a chance to parody his own self-image as a ladykiller as well as toss out some inside humor about Braveheart. After all – what are the chickens after? FREEEEDOMMM!!! But Julia Sawalha provides a great heart to the voice of Ginger, strong enough to lead her fellow chickens to the Promised Land, yet with just enough fear to doubt her good intentions. And that fear is instilled in the audience too, for as opposed to Disney’s Dinosaur, Chicken Run doesn’t shy away from the fact that sometimes animals do, in fact, die as part of the grand design.Chicken Run is the perfect example of family entertainment. Young kids will love the story and the characters, while adults and older kids will dig the jabs at other films and its excitement. Chicken Run is yet another title in the recent animation explosion to hit the big screen that lends weight to the theory that animated films boast better scripts, because with the pain-staking time it takes to visuals, there’s more time to put some thought and intelligence into the written word and the story. Chicken Run is bound to end up somewhere on one of my year-end best lists. It ranks with the best of animation in recent times, proving that Dreamworks is certainly giving King Disney a run for their money.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1904&reviewer=198
originally posted: 06/16/00 08:17:50
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2005 Brisbane Film Festival. For more in the 2005 Brisbane Film Festival series, click here.
|
 |
USA
23-Jun-2000
UK
N/A
Australia
07-Dec-2000
|
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed![[AllPosters.com]](/images/icon/ap.gif){kind=icon}
