This movie is by Aardman Studios, who gave us the wonderful Wallace & Gromit animated short films which have garnered Oscars. The clay-animation is fantastic! The figures are so expressive after a while you forget they are blobs of plasticine.

Plot
The story revolves around the chickens on a chicken farm in the UK, run by the Tweedys, a domineering, mean woman, and her dim-bulb of a hen-pecked husband. There are mostly hens on the farm, with only an old, stuffy rooster, who used to be part of the RAF (Royal Airforce). The hens are required to lay eggs, failing which they get the chop, litterally, ending up on the dinner table. Amongst the hens is Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha of Absolutely Fabulous fame), who tries to lead the hens to escape the coop to freedom as free-ranging chickens. By accident, Rocky Rhodes (voiced by Mel Gibson, who does American brilliantly considering he's Australian), an American Rhode-Island-Red, a cocky cock, who used to be in a circus, and bears a dark secret, drops into their lives. In return for shelter and protection, Ginger extracts a promise from him to teach the chickens how to fly over the fence around the coop, for now the Tweedys have decided to give-up on selling eggs, and have purchased a monstrous machine to turn the chickens into meat-pies! How the chickens eventually learn Rocky's dark secret, and escape the Tweedys makes up the rest of the movie.

What I liked about this movie
1) The fantastic animation. There's one scene where it rained, and you have all this raindrops falling down, yet the animation was seamless.

2) It is so imaginative. The chicken farm is like a concentration camp, with the coops like the huts POWs used in WWI and WWII. The coops are ringed by a barbed-wire fence and guarded by the Tweedys' hounds with spiked collars. In a funny sequence, the past failed attempts to escape are shown; and the ways they do it are creative yet true to the movie's premise. How they eventually escape (we all know they will), is also rather brilliant.

3) The characters are engaging. There is Ginger, the leader, the strong "woman". Fowler, the gruff, stuffed-shirt, stiff-upper-lip, ex-regiment rooster. Rocky, cocksure Yankee, more flash than substance. Babs (voiced by Jane Horrocks of Little Voice fame, the brainless hen with a passion for knitting, who thinks that Ginger has gone for a holiday every time she gets thrown into solitary confinement. Nick and Fetcher, the two rats who are oily salesmen/thieves. Mrs Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) the money-minded meanie and her husband, the long-suffering Tweedy who can never convince her the hens are organising something and doubts his own sanity because of it. There are others as well, who all adds to the fun.


What I didn't like about the movie
The movie spoofs classic war-movies, like the Great Escape. That in itself is ok, but it does mean that you kinda know what's coming. The movie is rather formularic, which doesn't mean it is boring, but you do wish there could be more twists to the plot. And although the characters are engaging, they are slightly stereotypical.


Overall
Chicken Run is fun, and funny. There are certain scenes which may upset young kids (such as the offscreen beheading of a hen) but I felt they were handled very well. Overall, it is a great movie.

Recommended
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day