inger (Sawalha) may be a chicken, but that doesn't mean she can't dream of freedom. On Tweedy's ramshackle egg farm, Ginger is the only one among her rotund brood who repeatedly tries--and fails--to escape. "No chicken escapes from Tweedy's farm!" the dimwitted farmer says with a glower, before tossing Ginger into the coal bin yet again.
Ginger's resolve strengthens when the malevolent Mrs. Tweedy (Richardson)--the real power behind the farm--sacrifices poor Edwina because she's not laying enough eggs. The other chickens are content to settle for a life of egg-laying that ends at the chopping block. "The chances of us getting out of here are a million to one," they tell Ginger.
She replies, "Then there's still a chance."
As if in answer to her prayer, the cocky American rooster, Rocky (Gibson), descends from the skies to help her out. But not at first. Rocky just wants to elude the circus from which he flew. Ginger strikes a bargain: The hens will hide him if he teaches them to fly. He agrees.
Rocky rounds up the chickens and runs them through preflight calisthenics while trying to crack through the emotional shell that surrounds Ginger. Henpecked Tweedy suspects that the chickens are up to something, but Mrs. Tweedy will have none of it. "They're chickens! Apart from you, they're the stupidest creatures on the planet!"
Ginger begins to suspect Rocky's not all he's cracked up to be, as frequent attempts to fly the coop end in failure. And time's running out. Desperate to improve the farm's profitability, Mrs. Tweedy is cooking something up in the barn: A massive, steam-driven machine that turns chickens into pies.
Poultry in motion
Chicken Run, from Park (Wallace & Gromit) and Lord (Wat's Pig), plucks the hoary conventions of the World War II prisoner-of-war film and lays them in a 1950s Yorkshire chicken farm. Brought to life with Aardman Animation's trademark bug-eyed clay animation, Chicken Run manages to be charming, rousing, poignant and very funny at the same time.
The knowing allusions to POW films start before the credits, with martial music and plucky Ginger's escape attempts: digging under the fence with a spoon, tunneling out of the yard with an egg beater. In the "hole," she bounces a baseball against the wall like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. And she lives in Stalag, er, Hut 17.
Beyond that, though, the filmmakers take their chickens seriously. Ginger's longing for a grassy home without fences is genuinely touching. Rocky's moral dilemma is no less convincing than Mad Max's in The Road Warrior. Sawalha and Gibson breathe life into their respective poultry.
But that's not to say the filmmakers aren't out for laughs at every turn. Viewers familiar with Wallace & Gromit will recognize the quirky British sensibility, fondness for bad puns, and physical humor that relies in part on the chickens' bottom-heaviness.
And there are lots of funny character moments too, particularly the Abbott-and-Costello bits between two dim rats, or the cluelessness of Babs (voiced by Sawalha's Absolutely Fabulous castmate Jane Horrocks).
Chicken Run also supplies plenty of cartoony action, including a chicken's-eye tour of the pie machine. The finale, which parodies both The Flight of the Phoenix and Air Force One, manages to elicit laughs and nail-biting at the same time.
