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Chicken Run Customer Reviews (19 - 21 of 45 Reviews)

An EGG-cellent EGG-scape Animation
Well, what an absolute joy and surprise this movie turned out to be. I was dumb-founded from start to finish as to how the animators actually created this magical stop-motion picture. In the past three days I have watched this disc over and over again, not tiring of it at all. The story (ala "Stalag 17" and "The Great Escape") is simple yet effective. A group of English hens constantly plot and scheme to escape from their chicken farm, run by the tyrannical Mrs Tweedy (the voice of Miranda Richardson), before they are turned into chicken pies. Their only hope comes in the shape of a cocky, plucky American rooster named Rocky Roads (Mel Gibson in his best performance to date). "Chicken Run" is filled with great adult one-liners and jokes and is packed with every war/escape movie cliche know to this genre. It will also appeal to the little ones. The disc is great value. The DTS soundtrack is pretty awesome and really kicks into power when the chicken pie oven blasts into action....WOW! The video transfer is crystal clear, which adds an extra dimension to the clay models. The extras are fun also. The "Chicken Panic" button is very cute, "The Making Of" docos (there are two) are VERY interesting and informative, and there is great information about the movie hidden throughout the menus....you have to find them! The highlight of the disc is the voice of Jane Horrocks ("Little Voice" and Bubble from "Ab Fab") who steals the show as Babs the dumb hen! She's hysterical. Make sure you buy this disc for your DVD library. You won't be disappointed! If this movie doesn't win an Oscar at next year's Academy Awards....I'll give up poultry for life!

BEST ANIMATION FILM FOR **GROWNUPS** (!) IN YEARS
Oddly, CHICKEN RUN has been mainly marketed for children. This sophisticated barnyard action-adventure film can no doubt delight a child. But adults will get even more out of it. The story, dialogue, animation and prominent off screen actors are terrific.

Ginger (Julia Sawalha's voice) is a fiesty English hen who has been plotting to escape from the Tweedy Chicken Farm. She can't stand the oppressively "de-chickenizing" working conditions. The wickedly, bottom-line obsessed Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) literally makes fried chicken our of "anyone" who is not effcicient and productive. The product is eggs. But soon the egg market takes a hit and profits fall. Wicked Mrs. Tweedy decides to turn the farm into a factory that produces chicken-pie!

Now Ginger must get out or else get put into a pie. Then the devil-may-care circus American Flying Rooster (Mel Gibson's voice) urges the chickens to escape by flying out to safety. Rooster will teach them to fly. And so it is a matter of the two ringleaders succeeding against all odds to save their fellow foul.

The animation is an amazing dazzling feast for the eye. Directors Peter Lord and Nick Park skillfully take the audience through this feathery adventure, managing with excellent and witty dialogue to keep our interest up from beginning to end. There is no doubt that children will love it. But I expect adults to love it even more. This is one of those rare, gripping action-adventure [without SEX and VIOLENCE!] that children and grownups can enjoy together. Wow ... what a novel idea.

This extraordinarily well made animated film is highly recommended for all viewers ... but they must be accompanied by a child!

Laugh, Think again, Marvel on it... laugh...
DreamWorks' unvbelievably crafty and doubleplusgood stop-animated hit `Chicken Run' provides enough originality of concept and expertise of execution to score as fun, high-spirited entertainment for the whole family.

Deliciously reminiscent of the 1981 classic BBC series "Tenko", (a tale of british female POWS in WWII), 'Chicken Run' cleverly envisions a British poultry farm as a barbed-wired camp in which a group of animated hens and one retired RAF rooster are trapped in a life of hopeless, egg-producing servitude. When the owners of the farm decide to up their profits by converting their operation to a chicken pie manufacturing plant, Ginger, the feisty, levelheaded hen who harbors visions of a glorious life beyond the confines of this hellish prison, decides it is time for the ladies to band together and find a way to escape once and for all.

Meanwhile, into their lives drops Rocky the Flying Rooster, a wisecracking American circus performer whose head is easily turned by the attention such a singular stud naturally receives from a coop full of love-starved females. Together, these unlikely heroes and heroines plan and scheme their big break, encountering various setbacks and thwarting multitudinous dangers along the way.

As a piece of animation, 'Chicken Run' is truly outstanding. Opting for traditional animated puppetry rather than drawn cel animation or even computer-generated graphics, the creators of 'Wallace and Gromit' (Peter Lord and Nick Park) do a remarkable job of creating an assortment of characters whose movements are fluid and whose appearance borders on the surrealistic. In short, these are not `realistic' looking chickens - all the better to enhance the otherworldly quality of the film's setting. The carefully crafted sets and backgrounds represent a similar triumph in the areas of attention to detail and establishment of mood.

The movie is, quite simply, a joy to look at from beginning to end, and it is gratifying to know that filmmakers can buck the recent trend towards full scale computer animation and still produce a film that looks this impressive.

Just as important, Karey Kirkpatrick has provided a script filled with clever one-liners, finding just the right balance of acerbic wit and heartwarming sentiment. In addition, every single voice, including [absolutely] fabulous Julia Sawalha as heorine Ginger, Miranda Richardson as cool, calculating Mrs. Tweedy, Jane Horrocks as lovely, featherhead Babs, "Shakespeare in Love's" Imelda Staunton as Bunty, the Stepford Hen and delicious Lynn Ferguson as Mac (you haven't lived if you haven't heard her speak, gorry!), sounds perfectly right in the context of the character assigned to it.

All in all, 'Chicken Run' certainly is one of the great works of animation done recently and it certainly will stand as one of the best such films of our times.

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