Released June 23, 2000:

I strongly urge everyone out there if ever given the opportunity to see this movie. Do not confuse Chicken Run as a “kids only” affair while you yourself sneak into something “better.” This movie is easily the best movie of this lackluster summer of commercial perpetual bile, and possibly one of the better if not best films of the year. It’s no secret I have an affinity for animation and the claymation choices of directors Nick Park and Peter Lord, of Wallace and Gromit fame, give the characters real emotion. I can just look at one of the chickens in the eye and feel emotion that I couldn’t get seeing many Hollywood films. The cinematography and animation is lush, vibrant, and breathtakingly beautiful. The story is fresh, wonderfully hilarious, and even touching. The voice artists are terrific, with Miranda Richardson pulling out as my favorite for her delightfully vile Mrs. Tweedy. Treat yourself to one of the very few decent movies this summer and see the incredible fun of Chicken Run, and if you still feel conflicted it has Mel Gibson in it. And if you still feel bad you can say you got lost on your way to the restroom.

Nate’s Grade: A

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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER

I’ve been a fan of animation since I was young, and stop-motion animation has its own unique and impressive charms. While it has been smoothed out with recent high-profile Laika entries (ParaNorman, Kubo and the Two Strings), there’s a distinct un-reality to stop-motion animation, a stutter-stop to the movements and its physical details that can place it in a beguiling middle-ground between fantasy and reality. I know thousands of hands toil many thousands of hours with every hand-drawn and CGI animated film, but seeing a literal canvas of three-dimensional physical proportions and knowing, with every second, that a person individually moved this figure bit by infinitesimal bit to provide movement, it gives me awe. It’s one of the reasons why 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my all-time favorite movies, plus its top-shelf soundtrack by Danny Elfman at the peak of his talents (I wore out my cassette tape listening to the soundtrack so often). The Aardman production team became famous from the success of their Creature Comforts and Wallace and Gromit shorts, but it wasn’t until 2000 that they tackled their first feature film. I saw Chicken Run in theaters three times that summer. I was so taken with the imagination, humor, storytelling, and efficiency of it, that I kept returning for more. Checking back in twenty years after that initial release, it’s still an effortlessly enjoyable comic caper.

This is an all-ages comedy that asks what if you remade The Great Escape but from the perspective of poultry. It’s a prison break movie that takes its stakes seriously but can still find room for goofy humor and a little romance. The screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick, working off the story by directors Peter Lord and Nick Park, is minus any fat. Everything in the script sets up the characters, their distinct personalities, goals, stakes, and complications, especially once our main characters of Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha) and Rocky (Mel Gibson) are at cross-purposes; he only wants to think of himself and she can only think about saving everyone. He’s hiding the secret of his limitations; she sees him as the answer to their plight, and they’re both growing closer to one another as their time to escape dwindles. Every character is responsive to the action of the others, so the repercussions of the escape attempts lead to the villains escalating their plans. Instead of seeing the chickens as egg providers and meat when they can no longer produce eggs, now they are all expendable and meat is the top Tweedy Farm meal ticket. There’s a clear connection between all the plot beats that is deeply satisfying. Chicken Run is only 85 minutes long and it doesn’t waste a moment to make you smile and tell a good story.

I laughed several times, especially with the daffy Babs (“Are we going on holiday?”), and also the ingenuity of the slapstick. There’s a sequence going inside the machinations of a pie-making machine that is wonderfully developed with great obstacles leading to great slapstick. There’s one stretch where Ginger and Rocky find themselves inside a giant lit oven and they have to race out by leaping from pie to pie. Ginger is fleet and gets ahead, but Rocky tumbles into one pie after another, which is already good slapstick paired with an exciting scenario. Then it cuts to an overhead shot and you see that Rocky has somehow managed to trip and fall in every pie in the oven. It’s small comic touches like that where the Aardman team excel with their funny.

This is also a deceptively visually impressive movie. The Aardman design, the big eyes and buck teeth, seems underdeveloped to a layman but Chicken Run is a beautifully made movie. The stop-motion animation is professional and fluid, but it’s the degree of camera movement and visual enhancement that wowed me. There are long camera pans between human-sized characters and chicken-sized characters. There are visual gags that pop, especially during its thrilling finale when the chickens build their own flying contraption to escape. Mrs. Tweedy (an amazingly wicked Miranda Richardson) is hanging by a cord of lights, smashes through a billboard advertising her pies, and her face is replaced with the smiling billboard version a second before she rips it apart to reveal her frenzied homicidal expression. The use of montage in the opening to establish the many failed escape attempts by Ginger and her solitary confinement punishment is fantastic. Even just keeping the scale between the humans and dogs and chickens is an impressive feat as a physical production. The color palette can be, understandably, a bit muddy, but the imagination on display on a micro and macro level is thoroughly entertaining.

The vocal cast perform excellently. In my original review, I cited the inclusion of Gibson as a reason to encourage animation-wary moviegoers to see Chicken Run. In the ensuing twenty years, Gibson is definitely not seen in the same light thanks to his anti-Semitic and misogynist rantings. I can understand not wanting to watch this gem of a movie simply because you don’t want to listen to the man’s voice. I get it, but if you can overlook the man’s failings, his performance is lively, brash, and all the character requires. Sawalha (TV’s Absolutely Fabulous) is a plucky and expressive lead and gives a real heart to the movie. Ginger could easily escape but she’s determined to save all her peers even if they don’t appreciate her help. In 2020, Netflix announced they were producing a sequel to Chicken Run, and they also announced they are replacing Sawalha as the voice of Ginger. This deeply hurt her and the stated reason was that she sounded too old now. Sawalha recorded herself reading the same lines from twenty years ago, and she sounds identical to her 2000-circa self (listen for yourself), at least to my ears. Ginger just won’t be the same without her.

This was also one year before the Academy created the Best Animated Film Award, which would go onto 2001’s Shrek. I’m convinced if this award had been established one year earlier that Chicken Run would have been its very worthy inaugural recipient. Other animated films released in 2000 that might have contended: The Emperor’s New Groove, The Road to El Dorado, Titan A.E., Sinbad, and France’s Princes and Princesses. It seems bizarre today but there wasn’t a single wide-release CGI animated movie from Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks, or Nickelodeon. This was the last-year it was predominantly hand-drawn animation, which I do miss dearly.

Looking back on my brief review in 2000, I cannot recall why I had such antipathy for the major studio releases that summer. Gladiator was a success, though Mission: Impossible 2, Gone in 60 Seconds, Shaft, Titan A.E., Me, Myself & Irene, and The Perfect Storm disappointed me. Plus, there was the cataclysmic misfire Battlefield Earth. Whatever the case, Chicken Run was a breath of fresh air for my 18-year-old self that summer season. My younger self felt more compelled to argue that animation was not merely a medium for children, a stigma I believe has been significantly chipped away over the decades, especially with the publicity of Pixar. The Academy Award also gave the field a long-overdue honor and boost to the public. Aardman has released several movies after Chicken Run, including the absolutely delightful 2012 Pirates: Band of Misfits, which I highly recommend for all ages. I love animation and filmmakers that take advantage of the overwhelming possibilities the medium affords. My A grade stands. Chicken Run is just as enjoyable today. It might not be an all-timer of animation but it’s 85 minutes wonderfully spent.

Re-View Grade: A