Although it doesn’t have the fame of studios like Disney, Aardman Animations has been bringing us gems for about 20 years. ‘Wallace & Gromit’, ‘Caveman’, ‘Shaun the Sheep’… and, of course, ‘Chicken Run: Farm Escape’, his letter of introduction and also one of the funniest animated comedies ever. You can see it on Disney+.
chickens on the run
Life on the farm isn’t bad. It is a bit routine, yes, having to lay eggs every day can be hard. This is how Ginger and her companions think about it, a group of free range chickens that one day discover a terrible truth: Chickens that fail to lay eggs regularly end up as chicken pie. Fed up with living in fear, they decide to plan an escape with the help of… a flying rooster?
‘Chicken Run’ was the Aardman Studios debut feature in 2000. Produced by DreamWorks, directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park, scripted by Karey Kirkpatrick (‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’) and featuring the voices of Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha, and Timothy Spall in the original dub.
The film is made in stop-motion (animating frame by frame), one of the most expensive types of animation and one that often doesn’t get the recognition it deserves at the box office. However, this time he can boast of being highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time.
This film is a perfect example of the best of Aardman cinema: a simple but effective sense of humoraccessible to all audiences, terribly entertaining (it lasts less than an hour and a half) and full of memorable moments.
As a comedy it is a real gem, knowing toggle verbal jokes and slapstick gagsmaking plenty of puns (who would have thought that so many jokes could be made about chickens?) and also leaving room for the dramatic evolution of the characters.
The characters shine for their charisma, with a cast full of plane-stealing secondaries (impossible to forget Babs, the knitting hen, Fowler, the busted rooster, Mac, the inventor hen…) and two protagonists with hilarious chemistry.
Another common aspect of this study is take classic genres and transfer them to animation. So, here we have constant references to escape movies, with the rebellion of this chicken coop against the tyrannical farmers. Without forgetting certain touches of screw ball comedy in that constant tug of war between Ginger and Rocky.
‘Chicken Run: Farm Escape’ is a wonderful animated comedyfull of hilarious gags, cinematic references and charismatic characters, who children and adults will enjoy. Who knows? Perhaps soon we will hear from that sequel that was raised 20 years after its premiere.