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As a hard-core Wallace & Gromit fan I looked forward to the movie "Chicken Run". After all, Academy-Award winning director Nick Park and his partner Peter Lord were at the helm, so what could go wrong? What could possibly happen to taint the certain innocence and sweetness, delight and charm of Park's particular stop motion animation that takes form in clay?
Dreamworks, the upstart Hollywood studio started by Steven Spielberg and his ilk, brought this movie to the silver screen, and the hand of Dreamworks in this otherwise enjoyable work is apparent: Mrs. Tweedy, a British woman, who would otherwise be nice and English proper, isn't. She is a money-grubbing sort who means to make business: Early in "Chicken Run" she singles out a hen who hasn't been doing its bit to contribute to the daily egg production and condemns it to death at the chopping block. Now this is animation, this is Park, with his wild-eyed, all-teeth characters of clay, in whose world a joke is expected in such a situation. There is no joke here. Just horror, the likes of which one might expect from Stephen King or Dan Simmons: The chicken loses its head, the other chickens hear the --whump-- of the ax falling hard, and later we (and the hens) see stripped bones. Chaos and mayhem, the elements that would otherwise define Nick Park animation and filmmaking, are initially subverted for the heavy themes of life and death. But despite the heavy-handed presence of Dreamworks in this work, this movie is cinemagic. "Chicken Run" begins as a send-up, a spoof of prison pictures of the World War I and II eras. (See if you can catch and count all the references, nods, and homages to such efforts as "Stalag 17", "The Grand Illusion", and "The Great Escape". It's worth another viewing just to do this.) The central location in the movie is 'Hut 17'. (Know the reference? And that's just for starters!) Now most of the chickens are content with their captivity. They get three squares a day, not to mention tolerable lodgings. But one named Ginger has other ideas on the situation, and tries to escape again and again. In P.O.W. films and movies the would-be escapee is locked up in 'The Cooler'. Here it is the coal hole. Escape is expected, I suppose, given the nature of chicken runs. But Ginger's situation becomes more tense and urgent when Mrs. Tweedy (voiced by Miranda Richardson) decides she isn't making enough from eggs; that she could make more by turning the chickens into chicken pies. Go To Page: 1 2
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