Excellent claymation.

Rating: 10/10 (14 March 2001)

I was really surprised by Chicken Run. I was expecting some dumb kids movie that tried in vain to be as good as other animated classics like Toy Story, but this was a really good film. The story involves a bunch of heavily accented chickens who are trying desperately to learn how to fly so that they can escape the chicken farm where they live, and therefore escape being butchered and made into chicken pot pies.
One of the best things about this movie is the great laughs that it delivers, particularly from the dialogue as this diverse group of chickens communicates with each other about their predicament (`Chickens go in, pies come out!' `Oooohh!! What kind a pies?'). Mel Gibson is great as the voice of Rocky the Rooster, who inadvertently landed himself in the pen with the other desperate chickens, therefore accidentally convincing them that he can fly.
(spoilers) Rocky and the rest of the chickens work desperately to escape the evil Mrs. Tweedy and her pie-making machine, as well as Rocky's dishonesty with the other chickens, particularly Ginger, with whom he develops a heartwarming romance. The chickens' eventual escape is ridiculously unrealistic, but it doesn't matter, because it doesn't have to be realistic. The main characters of the film are talking chickens, I think that a flying machine built and flown by chickens is not going too far, given the type of film that this is. The makers of Wallace and Gromit have come up with another winner, and it's good for the whole family.