"So, was it as good as you expected?"

Rating: 5/10 (10 July 2000)

No... it's worse. I have the unfortunate distinction of sitting next to a woman at work so obsessed with all animal kind that she spends her evenings baking jacket potatoes for her bird table. With grated cheese for topping. No joke. In fact, so near is she to the welcoming arms of insanity that she claims keeping fish in tanks is "captivity" and campaigns for the rights of maggots. And so it was that I went to see Chicken Run, not because I wanted to, but to shut up an eccentric colleague who asks me if I've seen it on a twice-daily basis.
On the positive side, thrice-Oscar winner Nick Park might be working with an American company for the first time but he doesn't sell out. Animation's first-rate and the humour is still as English as Wallace and Gromit. The inclusion of Mel Gibson as Rocky the Rooster also fits. Amusingly, Gibson's Rocky fails to understand a chicken with a Scottish accent, which may come to explain his own attempt in Braveheart. Most of the better jokes  such as multiple references to The Great Escape, The Weather Girls and a weak Star Trek spoof  got laughs from the adults but were lost on the child demographic. They're treated to a predictable series of self-conscious blinks, double takes and pratt falls, which over-egg (geddit?) the joke a little. As for the child audience, despite some comic violence, it does warrant it's "U" certificate. The only odd point is, in a film devoid of bad language, the sole usage of the word "bugger". A mild English expletive, bearing in mind its actual meaning, it should be more offensive to right-wing middleclass audiences than the "f" word. The fact that it is patently isn't is an interesting lesson in the misplaced priorities of linguistic experts.
There's always the nagging feeling that the plot isn't long enough for it's 90m duration, or that the jokes aren't funny enough. Pipe smokers may urge an Orwellian perspective on the class divide, but it's really just a so-so "see it if you really like that sort of thing" kid's film about plasticine chickens. But at least my deranged co-worker can now finally be silenced.