It's a simple movie with great characterizations, a nice plot, fun dialogue, good visual gags, and 1 big special effect - the Claymation. The cinematography and art direction is just breathtaking. You spend the first 10 minutes of the movie looking at details like the mud on Mr. Tweedy's boots and thinking "This is great." You lose yourself amongst the talking chickens and rats until you see rain drops rolling slowly off of a despairing chicken making you wonder whether any of the Claymation animators went insane during the process of making the movie. It takes 24 frames of film to make a second's worth of action. This means, as an animator, you poke at each figure a little bit to set up the next shot and when you're done, you take a picture. Then you repeat the process 24 times and you get a second. Repeat that process 4800 times or so and you have a movie. Think about that while you're watching all the chickens line up for morning roll call. Computers were used to synchronize dialogue and to help match the lips and teeth with what was being said but the rest of it is done by humans who obviously love their work and who have a deep appreciation for the art of filmmaking. My favorite scene is a slow camera pan of chickens standing in the rain that really accentuates the despair of the moment. This is classic not MTV cinematography.
The movie was written and directed by the animators Peter Lord and Nick Park. Park is the creator of Wallace and Gromit and lends the characters their personality and charm. The benefit of this being a British production is that the humor and entertainment are driven from the premise and the elements in the story as opposed to similar American productions usually driven by Things That Sell A Movie To A Target Audience (guns, explosions, cute animals, naked chicks, etc.) and Things That Can Be Marketed To Gullible, Greedy People (BMWs, Ray-Bans, toys, clothing, dolls, soundtracks, etc.).
It doesn't rely on songs or Broadway revues to move the story forward, with the exception of one swing dance scene. There were a couple times I thought they were going to break out into song, and I'm sure if it had been a movie from The Evil Mouse Corporation, they would have. It doesn't have throwaway characters for the sole purpose of comic relief. It doesn't make any horrible anachronistic pop references for the purposes of attracting the teen crowd. It takes place in the 1950s and everything reflects this. It does make references to other movies, notably The Great Escape, but these are more tribute then marketing-driven. A lot of the humor was written clearly for the adults in the audience. I would almost argue that much of it would be wasted on children. We definitely had evidence that it was lost on the babbling 8- year old and under crowd from listening to the 5 children and 1 frantic mother sitting down the row from us. (Side Rant: I know I don't fully appreciate the nuances of parenting yet but I wish parents would stop taking children not old enough to behave themselves (to a certain extent) to movie theaters.)
Chicken Run is a movie with a great deal of humanity. That sounds funny but it's true. It tells a great story in the way a story should be told - quietly, carefully, with great attention to detail, and with careful attention to the characters. It manages to do this without resorting to cheap theatrics, boilerplate dialogue, or violent special effects. I highly recommend this movie, giving it an 8 on the Good Movie Scale.
Our drive-in totals:
1 Dead Body
124 Breasts
Axe to the neck
Gratuitous Chicken Dance
0 Easy Listening hourly-airplay theme songs!
1 Brussels Sprout
1 slightly-more-useful Carrot
1 Bomb Casing
1 Egg Beater
2 Disco Rats
3.14 bent wrenches
2 antagonists with no first names
Many good puns
References to:
Braveheart
E.T.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Stalag 17
Star Trek
Star Wars
The Great Escape
Wallace and Gromit
(By no means a complete list, but these are the most memorable)
Lipless kiss
Chicken vs. Egg debate (wait through the end of the credits)
Kung Fu
Chicken Fu ("Chicken Fu, what's the matter with you?")
Axe Fu
Egg Fu
Gnome Fu
Gravy Fu
Cock-A-Doodle-Fu (This is Joel's fault.)
8 out of 10 on the Good Movie Scale
This is not a Bad Movie.
