Just as good as W&G.

Rating: 9/10 (27 January 2007)

If you think that Wallace and Gromit were Nick Park's only good creations, you are definitely wrong. Creature Comforts is also another of his successes, and this film "Chicken Run", the first Aardman feature film, ensures he pulls through with a clean track record. Not a duff project has come from him yet - even the Wallace and Gromit movie was great. This film is a simple idea - chickens trying to escape from their cruel masters - turned into a great film, with plenty of humour and fun to be found along the way. The film is also technically great - the animation we have come to expect from Aardman is top notch, as testified to by the scenes inside the pie machine and several of the escape scenes. The film manages to reach a very satisfying emotional conclusion - and there are a wide variety of characters to be found. The two gangster rats (I've forgotten their names) add a sense of corruption and cunning to the chicken coop, Mrs. Tweedy makes for quite a menacing, evil villain, unlike her rather oafish husband. Ginger is good as the main character and the person who we follow throughout the whole film. The scene at the start where the chicken was taken away and killed was about as dark and sinister as we can expect from animated films - low music and a general sense of fear really add a dark side to it. And there's real voice talent in the form of Mel Gibson as Rocky - the American chicken who isn't all he claims to be... With the way things are going after Flushed Away (which was a great film but underperformed at the box office), Aardman have yet to produce a duff film. Hopefully, that will never happen. 9/10