THE GREAT ESCAPE, with chickens

Rating: Null/10 (4 July 2000)

In what feels like the thousandth working-through of his Holocaust anxieties, DreamWorks' cofounder Steven Spielberg must have felt pretty odd in the scene in which two birds escape from...a giant oven? As a rundown of POW-movie cliches a l'oiseau, CHICKEN RUN is more intelligent and craftsmanly than its peers; fans of WALLACE AND GROMIT's dry wit will be amused. As a relative outsider, I found it a little poky and bland, if unobjectionable. As brainier-than-most animated fare goes, I preferred DreamWorks' more American, and more neurotic, ANTZ.