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CHICKEN RUN is the year's best movie, says me, an explosively cre- ative, all-ages appealing, cheerfully dark and Very British (VB) animated update of, well, STALAG 17. (World War II POW-inspired humor in a major studio summer release? Whoda thunk?) The "clay- mation" feature is the first full-length film from Nick Park's A- ardman Animation, creators of the Oscar-winning (and similarly an- imated) Wallace and Gromit shorts. (What, you've never seen Wal- lace and Gromit before!? Stop reading right now, run to your fav- orite video store, and rent THE WRONG TROUSERS and A CLOSE SHAVE. Two tapes. Maybe an hour, tops. You'll life will be changed for- ever.) In this fowl English feature, Mel Gibson stars as the voice of "Rocky the Flying Rooster" (and, gasp, Yank) who drops out of the sky in seeming answer to the prayers of Ginger (voiced by television actress Julia Sawalha), a plucky hen who dreams of a better place than a barbed wire-ringed, guard dog-patrolled chick- en farm. (She's also the most motivated cluck, always leading the newest hatched-- and invariably egg-laying-- escape plan.) So when this seemingly skilled cock-of-the-walk lands in her lap, she pressures him into teaching her birds to fly. Hilarity ensues as the rotund team tries to overcome gravity via springboard, roof- top, and, in one wonderfully wild sequence complete with pun-hur- tling rodent spectators, elastic band behind wheeled cart. (The hen with thick glasses and thicker Scottish accent is the engineer in the group. She's also the source of a "Star Trek" reference requesting "more power." Aye.) Miranda Richardson and Tony Hay- garth voice the villains-- the order-barking farm owner Mrs. Twe- edy and her hen-pecked (ha!) handyman husband. The plot has Mrs. T. adopting a new business plan, that sees the delivery of an e- normous, sinister-looking machine as well as her abrupt instruc- tions to "fatten the birds up." (Love the greasy detail on the undercarriage of the delivery lorry...) Meanwhile, Rocky keeps getting egg on his face trying to get the girls airborne. Is *he* everything he's cracked up to be? And is something cooking betwe- en him and Ginger? (Do chickens kiss? Or just give each other... pecks?) The script, by Karey Kirkpatrick and Jack Rosenthalm, scratches familiar ground for the first hour. Escape attempts; heroic res- cues; boy/girl, er, rooster/hen banter; we've seen this stuff before, though never in Nick Park style. Never with stop-motion, clay-sculpted figures bearing the trademark buck teeth, big eyes, and those wonderfully droopy smiles. Plus, as the characters *are* chicken-sized, the accompanying props provide a parade of a- musingly utilized everyday objects. (Like the egg beater-turned- dirt borer in the opening montage-- a montage, I'll add, that dis- plays more creatively that most summer movies show in their *en- tirety*.) Perhaps the biggest surprise, at least for Aardman new- comers, is the amount of restraint displayed by Park and co-direc- tor Peter Lord. This is an exceptionally understated movie that relies more on droll wit than showy set pieces. (Brit-born kid- dies beware: the characters, notable the aforementioned wise- cracking rats, say the word "bum" a couple times.) For the fin- ale, the filmmakers let loose. As in the earlier W&G shorts, all stops are pulled out for the big finish. These ingenious (and of- ten laws of physics-defying) sequences are also the chief strength of the claymation medium: the ability to show something we've never seen before. In the 1995 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film-winning A CLOSE SHAVE, for example, sheep were stacked five-high on a moving motorcycle. Here, the most outrageously memorably moments involve the final solution of forty-some very desperate chickens to take to the air. And it's a stitch. You'll laugh, you'll smile, and you'll probably never see anything like it again. At least until Mr. Park makes another movie. Chute. (Rated "G"/85 min.) Grade: A Copyright 2000 by Michael J. Legeros Movie Hell is a trademark of Michael J. Legeros
Originally posted to triangle.movies in
MOVIE HELL: Very Fowl