CHICKEN RUN (2000) ***1/2

Reviewed 6/22/00

Nick Park already has a large number of devoted fans stemming from his inventive Wallace and Gromit shorts (which have also won him a couple of Oscars), but I had my doubts over whether Park and his collaborators could sustain their humor over the length of a feature when even A Close Shave dragged at times. I worried needlessly as Chicken Run turns out to be the most entertaining film of the summer so far. Like Adrenaline Drive earlier in the year, Chicken Run's story has been replicated so many times, it's beyond cliché; but also like Adrenaline Drive, Chicken Run proves that it's not the story, but how it is told that makes the movie. Park and co-writer/director Peter Lord make no bones that the movie is The Great Escape with chickens, and we basically get the first half-hour of The Great Escape in the opening credits of Chicken Run.

The transposition of people with chickens is already amusing, but that is infinitely enhanced by Park's character designs with the broad mouths, protruding teeth, and bulbous eyes. Even the jokes and predictable puns work because of the delivery from a superb cast. Leading the escaping chickens is Ginger, voiced by Julia Sawalha, a popular British television actress, who would be known to some in the U.S. for her role on Absolutely Fabulous as Saffron. Sawalha's Ginger virtually singlehandedly conveys all the determination and desperation in the film that makes it feel poignant. Mac (Lynn Ferguson), who would have been The Professor on Gilligan's Island, is Ginger's cerebral confidant. Mac is contrasted by brainless Babs (Jane Horrocks), who steals the show with lines like "Oh, me life flashed before me eyes… it was really boring" or the one which will be the quote people mimic coming out of the film, "I don't want to be a pie!" Only Mel Gibson as a self-conscious-sounding Rocky the Rooster comes off less than satisfying.

Chicken Run is filled with enough delightful stop-motion animation visuals to make Tim Burton bright with envy.  The machine in which "chickens go in, pies come out" is a terrifically realized invention of intimidating massive size and utterly cold, hard, impersonal metal.  Park also does unexpectedly wonderful things with his clay and plastic involving light and shadow, lenses and rain.  But finally, Park's ability to elicit glee comes most from his knack for interjecting mass chaos into the midst of order.  When Rocky tries to teach the chickens how to fly, Ginger leaps off the roof after all the other chickens go plummeting down in failure; however Ginger stays up and we think at first that she's succeeded, but then the camera cuts back and we see she's just standing on top of all the other chickens piled up to the roof, a pile which suddenly collapses.


Copyright © 2000 George Wu