After the huge success of Creature Comforts and Wallace And Gromit, expectations of Chicken Run were exceedingly high! Chicken Run is almost like an animated version of the classic film The Great Escape with the same music and very similar dialogue! I have to say that Chicken Run is one of the smartest and most extraordinary animated films that I think have ever been made! It is a very British film with really fantastic British humour and modern Britain background.
Chicken Run is set in a countryside chicken farm in Yorkshire, England in 1959. Ginger is the leader of the entire farm of chickens who are under the dominion of an idiotic farmer and his psychotic, greedy and evil wife. The chickens fall victims to the couple to make money by at first selling eggs (like workers) but then selling chicken pies. Many times, they have all tried to escape the farm and earn their freedom but when they meet Rhode Island Red rooster Rocky and catch him flying over the farm, their hopes begin to rise and make an epic escape from the farm. Mel Gibson voices Rocky and his acting was fabulous! To be honest, I thought that Rocky was a typical Mel Gibson character with not a heroic and leading nature but a charming nature like ladies man so to speak. Well, a "chick's man". Julie Sawalha's performance was very good as Ginger. The rest of the cast did well such as Miranda Richardson, Benjamin Whitrow, Timothy Spall, Phil Daniels, Jane Horrocks and Imelda Staunton.
Nick Park and Peter Lord create another masterpiece! What I admire about their work towards this film is that they bring something new to the screen but there are a lot of key points of originality like the Great Escape music, the clever jokes that we say nowadays and amazing characters! Aardman and Nick Park go onto create the Wallace And Gromit feature film after Chicken Run and now after seeing and loving both of them, I want to see something else from them but this time, something a tad bit different.
Overall, Chicken Run is a really smart, hilarious and quite emotional film that is one that I loved as a child and still love now! It is another fantastic demonstration at what we Brits can do. Definitely one of my all-time favourite animated family films!
9/10