Chicken Run (2000)
Directed by Nick Park
The creators of Wallace & Gromit bring you an exciting and original story about a group of chickens determined to fly the coop–even if they can’t fly! It’s hardly poultry in motion when Rocky attempts to teach Ginger and her feathered friends to fly…but, with teamwork, determination and a little bit o’ cluck, the fearless flock plots one last attempt in a spectacular bid for freedom.
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23 films that influenced Chicken Run
What critics say influenced Chicken Run
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.
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.
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."
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.
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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.”
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.
Park won his first Oscar for "Creature Comforts," deadpan interviews with hyper-articulate zoo animals.
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.
(I have a toy model of one sitting in front of me as I write this, so, yes, I'll bet you do.) Park had already nailed three Academy Awards in the animation category for his work on two Wallace & Gromit shorts -- 1996's A Close Shave and 1994's The Wrong Trousers -- as well as an earlier work from 1991, the sublime talking-animal gag Creature Comforts.
Nick Park has already won three Oscars for his short animated films Creature Comforts , The Wrong Trousers , and A Close Shave , the latter two starring the Wallace and Gromit characters.
Beginning with the Academy Award-winning 1989 short Creature Comforts, and through his epic Wallace and Gromit mini-adventures The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, Park has filled the mouths of his staunchly English, valiantly middle-class players clay-animated penguins and sheep as well as ladies and gents with soulful choppers: In good times and bad, the set of an Aardman jaw speaks volumes as said penguin, sheep, dog, woman, or man adapts with tea-and-toast-loving civility to unpredictable (and usually daunting) fate.
Three Aardman shorts by Nick Park -- Creature Comforts and two half-hour shorts with the cheese-loving Wallace and his wise dog, Gromit -- have already won Academy Awards.
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.
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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.