Humor does not survive Holocaust overtones

Rating: 7/10 (1 December 2005)

Wallace & Gromit are two of the greatest characters in the history of animated film, and Nick Park is unquestionably a genius. I've seen Park's three short films, one better than the other, and I've just seen The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which is hilarious and filled with adult humor. I'm circling back to comment on "Chicken Run," which seems to me to undermine the humor by cutting too close to the bone in its reliance on the Holocaust as a theme. "The Producers" and "The Great Dictator" exhausted whatever humor might be found in the doings of the Nazis, and Chicken Run falls decidedly short. Nick Park is neither Mel Brooks nor Charlie Chaplin, and Chicken Run is far darker than the Brooks and Chaplin films. The tragedy of the Holocaust has also been done exceptionally well -- most of all, to my taste, in "The Pawnbroker," though "Schlindler's List" was also excellent and the film about Hungarian Jews -- Sonnenschine or Sunshine (I've forgotten the exact title) featuring Ralph Fiennes as a defiant officer who is murdered by his Nazi tormentors in one of the grisliest scenes ever --all treat the subject with great effectiveness and emotional weight. Park's otherwise impeccable taste failed him in this movie.