Nick Park
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No one who remembers "Stalag 17" will have to guess at the number that's on the front of the hen house, and no veteran of "The Great Escape" will fail to recognize the contours of the farm, complete with barbed wire fencing, barking dogs, and a suspicious Mr. Tweedy checking the locks and muttering about what the chickens are up to.
What follows is a tribute to The Great Escape, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even a quick glimpse of Star Trek.
The first full-length feature from Aardman Studios, creators of the absurdly dry Wallace & Gromit shorts as well as the sublime Creature Comforts, Chicken Run is essentially a remake of The Great Escape except here it's corpulent hens looking for freedom from a muddy and dank egg farm in the British outlands.
This is The Great Escape with chickens, and herein lie the limitations.
If the overall storyline of Chicken Run strikes a vague chord of familiarity, that's because it borrows loosely from the classic World War 2 adventure, The Great Escape.
As you can tell, just trying to describe “Chicken Run” can put one into the state of euphoric silliness that must have engulfed Park and Lord when they first thought of redoing “The Great Escape” with silicone-and-Plasticine chickens.
Flushed Away (2006)
Directed by David Bowers
influenced by Chicken Run (2000), Creature Comforts (1989), A Grand Day Out (1990)
Despite being deeply steeped in British culture and dry humor, though, the film from directors David Bowers and Sam Fell (and an army of writers) simply lacks the simple, delicate charm that has marked everything Aardman Features has ever produced on its own (like “Chicken Run” and the Oscar-winning “Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit”).
After beginning its partnership with Hollywood's DreamWorks studio, Aardman stuck to its guns with the charming Chicken Run.
Like other films produced by DreamWorks and Aardman Animation (Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), Flushed Away is loaded with groan-worthy puns ("Pardon me, my fly's undone," says The Toad when an insect he swallowed tries to escape) and pop-culture references (I spotted nods to James Bond, Superman, The Fly, Batman, Lady and the Tramp, Finding Nemo and Mary Poppins, among others), and it playfully mocks horror-movie clichés, as well (the old fisherman who takes Roddy to the docks where Rita can be found speaks into a bottle to make his voice echo).
Much of it is also quite funny, which shouldn't be much of a surprise; Tracey Ullman was one of the creative consultants, and the screenplay was co-written by Peter Lord, who co-directed Aardman's 2000 hit "Chicken Run."
Flushed Away, the new feature from Aardman Animations (the animation studio that also produced Chicken Run and the ingenious Wallace & Gromit films) revels in its British-ness â itâs full of bone-dry wit, football references, and ribs on the French â and I was hooked from the first shot of Tower Bridge.
Aardman does goofy Claymation wit, DreamWorks does shiny blockbuster computer-generated imagery, and when the two collaborated on "Chicken Run" and "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit," the big behemoth generally let the little guys alone.
Folks who worship at the altar of Aardman Animations as much as they do at the temple of Pixar (raising my hand here) will quickly realize — say, 20 minutes into the movie — that Arthur Christmas won't come close to matching the giddy heights of the British studio's Chicken Run or Wallace & Gromit films.
Their first release, 2000's " Chicken Run ," was quirky and heartwarming in the best sense of both terms, while 2005's " Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit " and 2006's " Flushed Away " left something to be desired, over calculated slapsticks with a quarter of the charm intended.
Aardman's sterling cinematic track record includes the award-winning adventures of Wallace & Gromit, "Chicken Run" and "Flushed Away."
This is surprising since Aardman Animations is also responsible for the more adult Wallace & Gromit adventures and "Chicken Run".
I'm also inclined to call it the best Aardman feature since Chicken Run all the way back in 2000, with all due respect to the charming but overlong Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and the overly polished Flushed Away ; it has a more ebullient sense of humor and playfulness, and while it's disappointing that it's CGI, not stop-motion, there's less than no value in complaining about that sort of thing.
The buzz: The first collaboration between Aardman (the brainy British studio behind “Wallace and Gromit” and “Chicken Run”) and Sony Pictures Animation (“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”) is a CG-animated holiday comedy with a clever concept and expertly selected voice cast (also including Imelda Staunton as Mrs. Santa).
No one who remembers "Stalag 17" will have to guess at the number that's on the front of the hen house, and no veteran of "The Great Escape" will fail to recognize the contours of the farm, complete with barbed wire fencing, barking dogs, and a suspicious Mr. Tweedy checking the locks and muttering about what the chickens are up to.
The kids, for example, probably won't catch the "Stalag 17" references, or "The Great Escape" music during the opening sequence, but they'll love the slapstick antics and tangible animation of the clay heroes.
In fact, the whole structure of the film is drawn from classic World War II prison pictures such as Stalag 17 and The Great Escape; just as the Wallace and Gromit shorts drew on thriller-movie conventions, and indeed as other animated films from The Lion King to A Bug’s Life have traditional structures taken from earlier films.
Most are comparing the film to a spin on the POW pictures of the past, like "The Great Escape" and "Stalag 17," but striking me as more of a chicken-based variation on the Holocaust, "Chicken Run" is set at Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy's England-based farm, and centers on the poultry inhabitants who are constantly making attempts to escape the fenced-in, barbed-wired confinement that they have been restricted to.
In some ways "Madagascar" is a spiritual descendant of another kind of animated cartoon, clay animation wizard Nick Park's 1990 Oscar-winning "Creature Comforts," which had zoo animals talking feelingly about their lot in life.
The fox and hare investigate a yoga retreat run by a hippie yak (Tommy Chong) with a halo of flies; they track down a Hispanic-accented jaguar (Jesse Corti, in what I'd hope is a tribute to the accent of the bored jaguar in Nick Park's "Creature Comforts").
Finally, Miranda Richardson is convincing as the dastardly Mrs. Tweedy, who looks and sounds reminiscent of Margaret Hamilton, as the Wicked Witch of the West, in 1939's "The Wizard of Oz."
Everything is all here, from the copious film references (including, along with the aforementioned Batman Returns, references to The Matrix, Skyfall, and even obscure ones such as Final Destination and Vincent Price's The Abominable Dr Phibes) to the bad jokes and dog-related puns.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Directed by Henry Selick
influenced Chicken Run (2000)
Visuals
Directed by plasticine geniuses Peter Lord ("Adam," "Wat's Pig") and Nick Park ("Creature Comforts," "The Wrong Trousers") and produced by both men with Aardman co-founder David Sproxton, the movie is as much fun as The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach combined, minus the sociopathic cynicism even Tim Burton seems to be outgrowing of late.
The first-ever full-length claymation feature from Nick Park and Peter Lord — and the first full-length stop-motion feature film from anyone since Tim Burton brought us The Nightmare Before Christmas — Chicken Run is a wonder to behold.
Colorful and smoothly constructed, the picture rivals 1993's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" as the strongest use of basic claymation seen in a feature film.
And if the filmmakers are guilty of borrowing, they borrow from the best - witness a Greek chorus of penguin chicks straight out of Aardman's "Creature Comforts."
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Directed by John Huston
influenced Chicken Run (2000)
Visuals
His hedonism is part of his charm: Nursing a broken wing in a makeshift Jacuzzi as a bevy of hens caters to his whims, he resembles Walter Huston lolling in a hammock among the geishalike Mexican beauties of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”
There is a delicious movie, “ A Grand Day Out ” (1990), about going to the moon and returning safely, though pedants might say that it lacks historical roots, since the astronauts are Wallace and Gromit.
To wax Aardmanesque for a second, if she’d played Eisenhower or Bradley in “Patton,” George C. Scott would not have been the whole show.
Rounding out the coop is the none-too-swift Babs (Jane Horrocks, Little Voice ), and the scientifically disposed Mack, who sports thick glasses and an even thicker Scottish brogue.
Gibson (Braveheart) gives Rocky an energetic Yankee accent that contrasts perfectly with the sweet British tones of Sawalha (Absolutely Fabulous) and Horrocks (Little Voice) as Ginger and Babs.
This sincerity is most evident in Jane Horrocks , who was so appealing in 1998's Little Voice and was born to play Babs, a chicken who knits all the time.
Beyond that, there’s an aura of “Psycho” around the Tweedy house: The missus, when she swings an ax, bears a notable resemblance to Norman Bates’ mother.
What follows is a tribute to The Great Escape, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even a quick glimpse of Star Trek.
So even after seeing Peter Lord and Nick Park’s feature debut, Chicken Run – by far the single smartest family animation feature I have seen since Toy Story – I still wonder what the hell enticed these guys into crafting a story about chickens in the first place.
Like the "Toy Story" films, the Mr. Lord and Mr. Park know that the way to truly please audiences of all ages is not to dumb the story down.
Because stop-motion involves real objects in real space with real surfaces under real lighting, it has a dimensionality and a solidness to it that is still lacking in even the most sophisticated Toy Story -type computer animation.
Mr. Lasseter is the creator of Toy Story and other wonderful computer-generated animations.
While there is no doubt that 1989's "The Little Mermaid" and 1991's "The Beauty and the Beast" are great films, "Chicken Run," just like the "Toy Story" movies, excels in its involvement of the story because it does not require its characters to break out into song, and, rather, contains only background music to simply set the tone.
I spent countless hours as a kid obsessed with the Chicken Run movie and its PlayStation One adaptation. From Ginger’s antics was born a lifelong fixation on stories where people duck behind walls or narrowly avoid guards while making a break for freedom.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Chicken Run (2000)
Visuals
Each chicken is a miracle of characterization, and the tour-de-force sequence—in which the heroine and the Yank hero (Mel Gibson, never funnier) fight to stay in one piece in a pie-making machine with more wheels, cogs, and pulleys than Rube Goldberg's worst nightmare—surpasses Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) for sheer kinetic marvelousness.
1999’s Humdrum (Peter Lord and Nick Park’s Oscar-nominated short), in which shadow puppets played with shadow puppets, had the same level of detail in character animation, whereas 1998’s More (Mark Osborne’s ( Dropping Out ) Oscar-nominated short) featured the same level of detail in claymation sets and lighting.