In fact, one could make the case that the claymation chickens in Chicken Run , with their gritty determination, brittle emotions and ingenuity in the face of impossible odds, are the most human characters to come along in any film in months. In trying to reach primarily children, Aardman has reached adults the way any effective children's movie can. That's something Disney was often able to do before it apparently changed its mission from making great animated films to selling french fries and merchandise. But if Chicken Run is a cure for Disney fatigue, it might just be because its creators remember better than most what it's like to be a kid, and understand that the same things that stir the hearts, minds and imaginations of children are what adults have never completely let go of. Our dreams might have steadily faded and eroded the further down that dark path of adulthood we've journeyed, but we still remember them.
Childhood dreams, after all, very often have the inconvenient quality of being childish.
Very few of us can become movie stars or professional athletes, or even rise to the top of our own comparatively humble professions. It's a different thing entirely, we come to find, from setting low or unworthy goals. Two of my favorite children's movies share with Chicken Run both that dreamer's sensibility and, perhaps more importantly, an acknowledgement of the dark side of life. The first of these is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory , an edgy, at times diabolical cautionary tale about the perils of misbehaving. Amid the fantastical candy sets and the Lewis Carroll-esque non sequiturs is a message about the very real corruptors of childhood innocence.