Chicken Run (2001)

Chicken Run (2001)

6/10

Starring the voices of

Phil Daniels

Lynn Ferguson

Mel Gibson

Tony Haygarth

Directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park

Chicken Run was back then one of those stop motion animations you had to see. It was Aardman’s first feature film debut and as of 2020 their most commercially successful yet.

Chicken Run is enjoyable and it was done like a spoof to the 1963 WWII movie The Great Escape.

The movie introduces us to the chicken causing all the problems in Tweedy’s farm, her name is Ginger. The Tweedys run an egg farm and Ginger has witnessed what happens to chickens who stop producing eggs, they become dinner.

Ginger for a long time has been coming up with plans upon plans on how to escape the farm and always getting caught, by Mr. Tweedy. Who keeps telling his wife that Ginger is up to something sinister, but she always dismisses him that it is all up in his head.

Ginger never stops and things get a better light when she sees a chicken crash into their farm. The chicken’s name is Rocky and it seems that he was flying. Ginger and him reach a deal which was she will keep him hidden from those who are hunting him if he teaches them how to fly so they can escape the farm.

The movie is about that escape plan.

Chicken Run is a fun movie to see even though in comparison to other Aardman movies, it is not their best. For me so far their best was The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012) and that is not saying much from my side, because that is the last movie of theirs I have seen.

I have not seen their last three films Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015), Early Man (2018) and A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019).

When it comes to stop motion, Aardman seems to have a standard to which they keep to. Making the animation wacky and they use screenplays that are wackier than the animation itself. Aardman does not have the best stop motion there is (The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) takes that win), but their movies are fun all the same.

Stop motion has not been making waves in the box office lately, and many big production companies are staying a hell a way from it. I think other than Aardman in the last decade the next big stop motion movie was Frankenweenie (2012) by Disney and even that was not a commercial success.

Chicken Run and its success have paved the way for Aardman to make more feature movies, and there is word that a Chicken Run 2 is in production, I may guess the release date maybe next year 2021, twenty years after the first movie.