Okay. So maybe Chicken Run just wasn't the piece of animation genius I was hoping for to win me over in an age when Disney movies had become increasingly formulaic, uninspiring, and downright dull. Maybe having seen and loved the Wallace and Gromit shorts, Chicken Run missed the mark in the sense that it didn't have the shorts' charms. Maybe it's not Toy Story 2. Yet when all is said and done, Chicken Run is still well animated, inventive, highly original, and decidedly unformulaic. It just happens to feature chickens who are made of plasticine. That's all.

For those who have probably been living under a rock somewhere when this movie was released, Chicken Run is a Dreamworks production directed and produced by Nick Park and Peter Lord of Wallace and Gromit fame. It follows the story of a group of chickens living in a farm run by an evil woman who controls her chicken farm like a prison camp. Every day, Mrs. Tweedy goes to the chicken farm to inspect the chickens. Every chicken must lay a certain number of eggs each day. Those that don't pass the quota get the axe, so to speak. But Ginger isn't satisfied with this dreary existence. She is different from all the other chickens because she dreams of a life where everybody lives free from the humans. So every day, she tries to find a way out of the farm. Of course, every day, she gets caught and thrown into a storage bin. Plan after plan goes up in smoke every day, and Ginger begins to despair. That is until the day when an American rooster named Rocky crashes from out of the sky and into the farm and Ginger's life. Everybody thinks this rooster knows how to fly and falls in love with him. Rocky takes advantage of the good life he's being given, and pretends to know how to fly, offering to teach the hens the concept of flying.

Even though Chicken Run didn't become one of my absolute favorite animated movies, there were a few things that really impressed me about this new brand of animation. First was the animation itself. While I know nothing of the process, I assume it's very difficult to get plasticine characters to move. And I mean really move. And the producers didn't just make these characters seem realistic, they did it with style, the kind of style that almost went missing during Disney's blah period between The Lion King and The Emperor's New Groove. For example, when the movie focused on the chickens, the evil Tweedys were portrayed by huge stomping boots. When the movie focused on the Tweedys, the chickens were seen as much smaller, yet somehow still alive, people. And that's not all. These chickens go through so much animation, they look like they should fall over and break during the movie. Honestly, this movie should've been called The Chicken Olympics. Especially impressive is a scene where all the chickens got together to dance in a barnyard jamboree.

Another thing that I liked about Chicken Run was the infusion of personality into every single character. From the villains right down to the tiny rats, everybody was perfectly characterized and charming. It also helped that the characters were given such witty dialogue. As Disney movies became more and more formula heavy after The Lion King, their characters started losing their appeal and became more and more obnoxious. You won't find such characters in Chicken Run. It is easy to like everybody in the movie.

Finally, we come to the humor of the movie. While everybody's sense of humor is different from everybody else's, and while some of the humor seemed to have fallen flat for me, you will most likely find that the rest of the stuff is pure gold. And there's a lot of gold in Chicken Town. Bad puns, witty dialogue, situations, and pratfalls abound in this movie. And whether it works or not, the style of the humor is something I haven't seen in too many Disney movies until The Emperor's New Groove. Many Disney movies, especially the ones that came out during the 90s, rely on second fiddle characters to bring about the humor. You know them as sidekicks. Many times they worked. Sometimes they didn't. The result, however, was always the same--a feeling that something is sticking out like a thumb. Chicken Run is different. In this movie, everybody pitches in to try their hand at enhancing the experience, from the Tweedys to the rats. The result is a continual ride of humor, rather than just short spurts of humor.

Despite all the great things Chicken Run had going for it, animation, humor, originality, there were a few things that nagged at me and prevented it from becoming one of my more favorite movies. First was repetition. While this may not be a problem for everybody, I was left wondering how many times I could watch Ginger fail and get caught, fail and get caught, fail and get caught. After that, it was wondering how many times the chickens will fail to notice that they can't fly. This and other things make Chicken Run seem like a slow movie. However, such things, while annoying at first, are minor problems, and repeat viewings should make the slowness and repetitiveness disappear as the characters grow more and more on you.

Another thing is the animation, which while fluid and active, is also polished and refined to the point of being mundane. Many of Disney's modern movies feature an emphasis on a flashy visual style. In Chicken Run, you'll find no particular scene that stands out, no segment that looks like somebody plunked down more money than usual to make a minute of wizardry. Those used to eye candy may want to skip this movie.

Finally, some people will most likely compare Chicken Run to the wonderful Wallace and Gromit shorts. This really shouldn't be done because there is just no way that Chicken Run will measure up to the charm of the Wallace and Gromit shorts. One of the advantages to the Wallace and Gromit cartoons is the fact that they're short. Things accelerate quickly in a cartoon. The characters do what they do, and then they're gone. As such, Wallace and Gromit cartoons go for as much charm as possible. Chicken Run, on the other hand, is much longer, so things are more drawn out, and there's more dialogue. Fans who remember the Wallace and Gromit cartoons and try to find their spontaneous charms in Chicken Run will probably be mildly disappointed. It shouldn't be done.

Overall, despite the flaws, Chicken Run is a great movie, but it isn't an animated movie that you should watch to wow you. It's just a cartoon, but it does what many of Disney's post-Lion King movies have failed to do. It features originality, wonderful and charming characters that don't make you sick, and smashing animation to boot(how British). It also boils down to this simple fact. It's a parody. The fact that the chickens have teeth should give you that much. Considering this, I think the animators and producers did a wonderful job. I doesn't matter whether none of this stuff makes sense. The point is to sit back, shut off your brain, and enjoy. And seeing chickens with teeth is worth enduring all those countless Star Trek jokes. No wait. Those were actually good. And the ending is a doozy.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening