Film #190 - Chicken Run (2000)
Chicken Run marked the feature film debut for Aardman Studios, the animation house best known for the Wallace and Gromit shorts. It tells of a group of chickens desperate to escape the farm on which they live. Their attempts always fail, but the erstwhile leader, Ginger (Julie Sawalha) perseveres. When a hotshot rooster named Rocky (Mel Gibson) appears, their chance may have finally come.
I don’t know. There’s something about Aardman films that never quite clicks with me. It’s strange, because I’m quite the anglophile, yet Aardman’s output, some of the most British stuff you’ll find, generally leaves me cold. The Wallace and Gromit stuff is amusing enough, but I wasn’t impressed by Curse of the Were-Rabbit. In fact, to date the only project of theirs that I thoroughly enjoyed was the atypical Flushed Away. After enjoying that film, I decided to go back and watch this one, their first feature, and see if maybe I just hadn’t hit the material. But, no, it still doesn’t work for me. Oh, it’s good and I laughed enough, but it just doesn’t grab me like one would think it would.
I guess part of the problem comes from the simplicity of the characters. Fun though they may be, none of the various chickens show any real depth. They pretty much are who they are and any kind of revelation or character growth is obvious from the first. The humans fare worse. Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson), the real villain of the piece, is as two-dimensional as they come, pursuing her chicken pie scheme with no regard to how she could continue producing once she’d killed all of her chickens. (I mean, you have to keep breeding more chickens don’t you?) Mr. Tweedy (Tony Haygarth) shows glimpses of an interesting character, but it never develops.
Not that the cast isn’t game. Besides the marquee name of Mel Gibson, the cast is populated by some pretty terrific British actors and actresses, including Sawalha (known from Absolutely Fabulous), Richardson (Blackadder, The Crying Game) Timothy Spall (the “Harry Potter” films) and Imelda Staunton (Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare films & Order of the Phoenix). They all give their best and at least keep things lively. But as I said, none of their characters have enough to them to really shine.
The look of the film doesn’t really raise the bar much as far as what Aardman had previously done with their shorts. Although there are a few action sequences, they are limited by the clay-based nature of the animation. Whereas Flushed Away’s CGI production allowed for a more lively camera, everything in Chicken Run is quite grounded and too static.
In the end, your mileage may vary with Chicken Run. If you enjoy most of Aardman’s output, this one should appeal to you. It is typical of their style and may be one of their strongest entries. If you are like me, however, and the appeal is somewhat lost on you, there’s nothing here that will change your mind.