Run (TO the theater)!

Rating: 10/10 (15 July 2000)

Remember those old Christmas movies that used stop-motion animation, like "The Year Without a Santa Claus" (you know, the one with Heat Miser and Snow Miser). In a way, that kind of animation was more fun because it has such a personal touch. Each frame requires a human hand to make a change. Digital animators are brilliant, true, but let's face it: isn't digital all about making animation easier? There is a programmer and then a computer that does the actual work. Companies like Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic have made great strides, but a film like "Chicken Run" shows you that the Old School still has a few tricks up its sleeve. Just consider that they've made a big, spectacular, blockbuster film--in the year 2000--with Claymation!
This film was made for kids, so they keep the story simple. It opens with the chickens of Mrs. Tweedy's chicken farm trying in vain to escape. At first it looks to be a remake of Wilder's "Stalag 17," only with poultry. With the fence and the rows and rows of shacks, it's really just like a POW camp. After the opening sequence, though, there are many references to other classic films, many of them Speilberg (coincidence?), but the story carves (pun?) out a life of its own. There is an outsider who has a secret, kind of like "Stalag 17," but here it's an American (the film's set in England) rooster named Rocky that crash-lands inside the camp. He's one of only a few men in the camp (it's an egg farm) and becomes an instant celebrity. The organizer of the escape plans, Ginger, suggests he teach them all to fly just as soon as his wounded wing heals. Problem is, Mrs. Tweedy is building a pie-making machine designed to mass-produce chicken pot-pies and time is running out.
The film is genuinely funny. I never had to laugh at anything in it out of courtesy. Not every joke flies, but you will howl more than a few times.
Every once in a while, there needs to be a stop-motion or Claymation feature to remind us that you don't need a computer necessarily to bring the imagination to life. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach" come to mind as other recent examples. Both stop-motion and Claymation have one important characteristic in common: the need to be photographed. In my opinion, there will never be a time when the human eye can truly be fooled by the ultra-real images created by a computer. One method digital animators use to make their characters more real-looking is the use of light and shadow. If you look close enough at, say, the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" (Spielberg again), you know it's not real shadows you're seeing across the back of that T-Rex. Like everything else on its body, a computer paints those shadows. With stop-motion, the animators can really light their images, using the full spectrum of colors, light, and dark that film stock offers, not to mention panning and trucking, split focus images, and other conventional film techniques. It just looks more, well, welcoming.
In closing, before I spoil the fun, be in a hurry to see "Chicken Run."
Grade: A