Disney and Pixar held such a firm grip on animation that somehow our expectations seem to have been conditioned by their standards. This is why enjoying a Hayao Miyazaki film or anything outside the 'Dream Factory' is capital to prevent a certain creative monopoly... for the sake of creativity itself. And to call "Chicken Run" creative is an understatement.
I have never been into claymation or stop-motion, "Wallace and Gromit" are household names but I'm not sure I ever watched any of their cartoons, but I admire the legacy, the patience with which Nick Park and Peter Lord gave life to these characters with unmistakable ovoid smile. They made their own style like Parker and Stone did with "South Park", animation starts with style, guts, a touch of zaniness and... a good story. Park and Lord designed it, Karey Kirkpatrick wrote the screenplay.
In 1995, having made names of themselves with two Oscars for Best Animated Shorts, the duo figured it was time to join the big league. After four years, was released "Chicken Run", a tale of chicken trying to escape from a big farm designed like a German POW camp with undertones that recall the darkest chapters of history. That the film maintain a jolly and goofy attitude is admirable because never the gags (and there are plenty of them) conceal what's in jeopardy here; not just freedom but survival.
In what might be the film's most disturbing scene, hens are aligned in the manner of prisoners waiting for the Kommandantur officer to give his orders and then a tall and thin woman almost goose-stepping with long and ominous black boots, checks her notebook and finds that one of her hens hasn't laid eggs in five days. There's a strange contrast between the poor hen's cartoonish gulp and the following scene where Mrs. Tweedy (voiced by Miranda Richardson) becomes the executioner.
That scene doesn't set the tone as much as the stakes. The opening credits treated the heroine's failing escape attempts as a 'running gag' (no pun intended) ending with her being thrown in solitary (a funny nod to "The Great Escape" shows her playing with a Brussels sprout like Steve McQueen's baseball) but when the poor hen is killed off-screen -we do hear the thud and we see the raising axe- we understand that it's a matter of life and death and these hens' lives hang on their capability to lay eggs, in fact, on economical viability to the money-driven owner.
Later she'd rent a new machine designed to make automated pies to increase her profits and so eggs will lose their life values. I guess one who had visited a farm or these industrial complexes where animals are mechanically stuffed and killed, won't find the historical parallels too far-fetched. Park and Lord humanized the hens and gave each one distinct personalities. It's perhaps the one concession to formula that had to be made, but it works. You know you have a leader, a brainiac, a reluctant one and a goofball in a community, but to call these hens archetypal would really diminish the effort pulled in the writing. At the very least they're war film archetypes not cute animated characters.
Ginger (Julia Sawalha) is the intrepid leader and the embodiment of "getting free or die trying", she's the voice of reason and her heroism leaves no doubt since her failing escapes are collective, if it was up to her, she would have been free already. She is supported by Mac, the scientific one (and ever since I watched that "What's My Line" episode, I know chicken can wear glasses), there's the most productive one Bunty (Imelda Stanton) whose skepticism is never overplayed, I actually loved her retort to Ginger's , "what haven't we tried before?" "we haven't tried not trying to escape" and there's Fowler (Benjamin Whitrow), an elderly rooster who keeps rambling about his experience at the RAF and youth's lack of discipline. And there's Babs (Jane Horrocks), the dim-witted champion knitter, one of these you can't help thinking 'God I wish nothing happens to her".
It's interesting that the film is mostly an all-female cast where even the villain 'Mrs Tweedy" illustrates a sort of female power by being so dominant on her hen-pecked (literally) husband Mr Tweedy (Tony Haygart). Female characters are so prevalent that there had to be a reverse 'Smurfette effect', besides the two helpful rats (Phil Daniels and Timothy Spall). There's where the cocky (literally) Rocky Rhodes (Mel Gibson), a rooster with flying powers (so it seems) crashes into the farm. One can imagine how a rooster would feel surrounded by so many groupies, but Ginger has no time for courting, she offers him a shelter in exchange of flying lessons. It's not much the training session or Rocky's morale-boosting actions but his hidden flaws that make him such an endearing character. In a funny coincidence, the same year Gibson played a similar role in "What Women Want". Rocky knows what hens want but will he live up to his premise?
As the plot advances, we understand that heroism is a dish often served with a share of bluff and the two roosters in fact have their shameful secrets. "Chicken Run" never runs out of ideas and gratifies us with great moments: a dancing party, hens trying to hide from Mr. Tweedy, and a spectacular climax. One of the film's greatest momentums is the trip inside the infernal pie-making contraption with some clever nods to Indiana Jones. And just imagine that the creators made four seconds of the film each day, just as if the hens dug a tunnel with toothpicks.
It's a credit to the authors to have made a film with such dark undertones so fun. It is mature but never at the expenses of entertainment. And hens are so believable as characters that we cheer for them not because we're required so but because we want to.
