A wonderful Film by all accounts

Rating: 9/10 (15 February 2018)

The beginning of the film strongly sets the tone of the rest of the film. Using the first escape attempt to show that the situation of Ginger and her friends as effectively hopeless.
While I could see it being argued that the opening montages are supposed to just instill in us the great idea of hope that they all have. However the way the depict the entire setting shows me that we are to believe that hope is futile and escape is impossible. The very opening shot shows us a very literal prison camp. Anyone who did not know what they were going to watch would be surprised to find out that the grounds with barbed wire, rows of cabins, and a guard with terrifying dogs under the moonlight is actually just a chicken farm, and this lends to the comedic effect in a way but more importantly leaves you with a clear message: leaving is impossible. This gets enforced by the very entertaining montage of escape attempts that follow. The clever use of comedy to distract from the underlying hopelessness the characters face is masterfully done. The best part comes at the end of the first montage when the comedy fades. Suddenly nothing is funny, and a friend of theirs dies as is normal around there. Nothing has changed. For a moment there just isn't something funny to distract you from the gravity of the situation and it is very masterfully done.
The introduction of the character Rocky is both one of my favorite and least favorite moments of the movie. His arrival and the belief of the other chickens that he can fly leads the characters to have hope that as an audience we know is pointless. The chickens believe their situation has changed entirely, but we as an audience know that chickens can't fly and that they have false hope. This works to enforce the previously established message: Escape is impossible. But more importantly it raises tensions. As an audience it is in our nature to root for the protagonist so it causes a kind of stress to work towards something they won't achieve for such a long portion of the movie especially with an approaching deadline of sorts. we are left wondering "How will they escape?" because we desperately want to believe that they can and will escape. This build in tension is wonderful and effective, but is also slow taking roughly half the time of the movie in total. When it reaches its peak during Ginger and Rocky's escape scene within the pie machine we are left in a rift of sorts. With Rocky having left the next morning and all the chickens fighting we are feeling the same hopelessness as Ginger in that moment where we question if they can actually escape. And then my favorite part of the film is the race that follows. After all the previous tension built and was released we are now faced with this race against the clock. It has the same effect as the previous tension building section but occuring in a third of the time. And more importantly unlike the beginning of the film most of this new plan of the chickens being carried out occurred in sunlight filling the scene with bright colors and hope drawing on the power of mise-en-scène to affect how we perceive the events. And of course from there the film follows the usual steps of any classical story with a climax, etc.
Now I mentioned that Rocky's appearance in the film also highlighted my least favorite aspect of the film, and that aspect is an out of place romance. The character of Rocky is a typical masculine roll in charge, aloof, and confident. He is also uncomfortable with how assertive and in charge Ginger prefers to be. This is an archaic trope for films to have an in charge female character who will be "Tamed" and/or "put in her place" by a man and somehow that is romance. I won't fault Chicken Run for including the specific trope it is nearly twenty years old now however having a romance in general feels like a mistake. It was out of place with all the other themes. Missing the necessary elements to be a romantic comedy which requires the focus of the film to be on the two romanticized characters. It also seems contrary with the characterization and actions of the character himself. Rocky having done a lot of wrong and a little right came far from redeeming himself completely, and it all ended with a romance that felt wedged in between other great movie elements.
Overall Chicken Run is a wonderfully hilarious comedy borrowing elements from other serious movies like any other comedy but comes with unique ability to apply them effectively but is still not free from the film pitfall that all movies must contain the elements of a heteronormative romance.