Egg-cellent `Chicken Run': It clucks on all levels
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Movie review
XXXX "Chicken Run," animated feature with the voices of Mel Gibson, Miranda Richardson and Julia Sawalha. Directed by Nick Park and Peter Lord, from a screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick. 85 minutes. Today and tomorrow at Pacific Place only; opening Friday at other theaters. "G" - General audiences.
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The best talking-animal movie since "Babe," DreamWorks' new clay animation barnyard fantasy, "Chicken Run," starts off as a witty reworking of "The Great Escape," in which Tweedy's Egg Farm becomes the equivalent of a POW camp.
Ginger (voice by Julia Sawalha of "Absolutely Fabulous"), the most motivated of the Tweedy chickens, has no problem digging her own way out of the place, but she wants to bring the rest of the flock with her. She repeatedly gets sent to solitary confinement, though she still produces enough eggs to keep her neck off the chopping block.
The chickens who don't produce are routinely slaughtered to feed Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) and her slow-moving husband (Tony Haygarth), who suspects that the chickens are getting organized. Still, some of the chickens act a lot like, well, poultry.
"We haven't tried not trying to escape," says the most complacent member of Ginger's flock. After all, what's really wrong with getting plucked, stuffed and roasted? "It's a living," says one bird. Ginger can't believe what she's hearing.
When Rocky (Mel Gibson), a rooster who calls himself "the lone free ranger," turns up, she's convinced he'll be able to teach everyone to fly the coop. Literally. At this point, you may think you've guessed the ending: Rocky convinces the birds they can fly, just as Professor Harold Hill convinces the untrained child musicians they can play "76 Trombones" for the bang-up finale of "The Music Man."
But when the greedy Mrs. Tweedy gets the notion to turn the farm into a chicken-pie factory, and Ginger and Rocky nearly become the unforgiving assembly line's first victims, drastic measures are called for. Wishing their way out is no longer an option for the flock.
Set in England in the 1950s, "Chicken Run" is the first feature-length film from Aardman, the 28-year-old British animation company that won three Academy Awards for its 1990s shorts, "Creature Comforts," "The Wrong Trousers" and "A Close Shave."
To the millions of children and parents who have become acquainted with Aardman's work on DVD and videotape, the clay-animated characters' popping eyes and dominant teeth will be instantly recognizable. The same goes for the dialogue, which suggests a mixture of overheard conversations and innocent puns ("Shoot!" declares Rocky as he gets sucked into a pie-making chute).
Nick Park, the genius behind Aardman's "Wallace and Gromit" series, co-directed "Chicken Run" with Aardman's co-founder, Peter Lord (whose "Morph Files" has just been released on video). Together they also came up with the storyline, although the sole final screenplay credit goes to Karey Kirkpatrick, one of the writers on Disney's "James and the Giant Peach."
The result is a tight three-act structure, designed to keep children from getting restless (a couple of action sequences are particularly riveting) while at the same time entertaining older kids and parents with a series of cleverly worked-out gags.
Gibson's "Braveheart" is ribbed in an episode in which the American Rocky is briefly mistaken for a Scot, and for a while Ginger seems to be playing Steve McQueen in 1963's "The Great Escape" (which is getting a rare wide-screen theatrical revival July 3-4 at the Egyptian).
These could have been little more than in-jokes, but they're handled so ingeniously that they're fun even if you don't recognize the source. That's the Aardman style, and it all but guarantees that you'll want to see "Chicken Run" more than once.