Chicken Run (2000) [Special Edition] – DVD

***/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B+
screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick
directed by Nick Park & Peter Lord

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Chicken Run is slight but savoury. While it doesn't have the conceptual punch that, say, a Disney spectacular might have, it has a great deal less malice than most other films aimed at the same segment of the market. Instead of a highly manipulative, emotionally overwrought run through the wringer, we have a sweet and good-natured exercise in whimsy and friendliness. While this means that the film loses something in terms of dramatic impact, it also means that it relies more on wit than it does on action. What could have been garish and brazen is here sweet and mild-tempered, and it sweeps you up in its goodwill until the final frames.

The film deals with an adventurous chicken named Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawhala), trapped with her sisters in a depressing chicken coop outside of a farmhouse somewhere in Britain. The proprietress, Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson), has a nasty habit of having the low egg producers wind up on her dinner table, and this galvanizes Ginger into action. She is always trying to liberate the chickens from the camp-style coops that fence them in, and for her troubles winds up in solitary–or rather, the coal box that serves as solitary on the Tweedy farm. So far, she has had no success with her exceedingly complicated schemes, and time has begun to run out: Mrs. Tweedy is beginning to eye an automated chicken pie-making machine as a way to make her minuscule profits go through the roof.

Only a miracle could relieve this dire situation, and so they find one: an American rooster named Rocky (Mel Gibson) lands, apparently through flight, into the desperate hands of Tweedy's chicken compound. This raises the hopes that the entire flock can be taught to fly, and thus escape the encroaching danger of the new pie-making developments inside the farmhouse. While recuperating from the broken wing he received during his "flight," Rocky gets to work in teaching the rudimentaries of flying, launching the hapless hens off the top of the coop and giving them "thrust" through the aid of purloined suspenders. But while this crafty rooster is busy raising everybody's hopes, the pie-making machine is made operative, and Mr. Tweedy decides to nip the poultry revolution in the bud by selecting Ginger, the most vocal of the agitating chickens, to christen the new device…

Mercifully, Chicken Run is devoid of the self-important moralizing that tends to afflict films of its kind. Neither a weak nursery instruction manual like Barney the Dinosaur nor one of the phony messages that poison most Disney extravaganzas, the film is happy to take a self-effacing middle ground between the two. Modest to a turn, it never takes the approach that it's going to save your life or deliver you from the forces of evil–it's merely about chickens trying to fly the coop. While there is, of course, the menace of Mrs. Tweedy and her dim-witted husband, they are never elaborated into the representatives of evil itself, and there is no great lesson to be learned through the process of liberating poultry. The film simply aims to please, skipping the lecture and moving on to the innocent puns and friendly homages to various prison-break films that serve no other purpose than to make us laugh.

Chicken Run's character design is equally mild and sweet, all rounded edges and beady little eyes, bolstering the atmosphere of good cheer and fair play that the script and direction have already spelled out. The chickens, however well- or badly-fed, have a pleasingly roly-poly feel to them, making them seem as slightly out-of-it and emotional as their characters are written. There's a wonderful scene in which the chickens try not to panic–and wind up panicking–that is an irresistable sea of heads sticking up from stocky bodies, and as they wander up and down the camp of coops they are deliciously unaware of the fate that awaits them. (Most enjoyable is a chicken voiced by Jane Horrocks, whose gentle stupidity is married to the hilarious body that she's saddled with.)

Even at its most malicious, as it is with the broom-handle straight Mrs. Tweedy and her wrought-iron pie-making device, the film is neither grotesque nor terrifyingly evil; she is part of a continuum that allows for large ears on her rectangular head and a pack of dogs that look about as threatening as a big stuffed bunny. That it is aesthetically generous to even its most villainous characters is a testament to the success of the carefully arrived-at look that Park and Lord are striving for, and it is this style that makes the movie what it is.

There are spots, however, where for these very reasons, the film is entirely too nice. Its inability to give us something approaching an edge causes Chicken Run to deflate for long spells: If there's nothing at stake for the characters on screen, and if we are not allowed to truly fear or dislike any characters, the film risks its effectiveness as a narrative. Worse, the plot itself is a little sketchy, allowing for no real character shading or flights of fancy that might have deepened our love for the heroes and given some thrust to the events that we see. Aside from Ginger and a few others, the hens are a largely undifferentiated lot, which makes things difficult when you need to care for them as they make valiant and dangerous attempts at escape. I'm not asking for the jaded theatrics of a Disney film, but I do request a harder edge and a better eye, so that the drama that unfolds can truly have some impact.

But in the end, cool heads prevail and Chicken Run is a success. While it might have had a little more urgency with another pass through the typewriter, what's on hand is plenty of fun. It's nice to see, for better or for worse, a film that has no ill will on its side of the screen, a film that aims to entertain without tears or pretensions, that simply wants to please its audience in the most genial way possible. It's a welcome breath of fresh air in a season of entertainment that's based on smash-and-grab style and a disdain for human life–Chicken Run tries to rescue its most bumbling and ridiculous fowl, overflows with goodwill for all of its participants, and has nothing more on its mind than the kind lesson it chooses to teach by example only. Originally published: June 26, 2000.

THE DVD
by Bill Chambers Letterboxed at 1.85:1 and enhanced for 16×9 displays, the image on this disc contains an extraordinary amount of shadow detail given the purposefully dank, oppressive lighting schemes, and our colourful heroes are vividly saturated without once falling victim to smear. Texture is this video transfer's strong suit; stand too close to the television and those imperfections you'll notice aren't compression artifacts, but rather subtle variations in the characters' shapes caused by the careful fingers it takes to manipulate them. Hands down the best-looking DVD I've yet to see from DreamWorks.

While the following doesn't affect me directly, as I haven't installed a third rear speaker in my home theatre set-up, on both Chicken Run and Gladiator, DreamWorks has opted to include a DTS mix with an extra back channel (DTS-ES) alongside the Dolby Digital 5.1 EX track (whose additional surround information is matrixed as opposed to discrete). The mostly stereophonic DD recording gets expansive–though, if you ask me, never bassy enough–during musical interludes and whenever the pie-making contraption comes into play. Good sound that will not frighten young children.

There's a little something for everyone among the bonus material. Young'uns should enjoy hunting for the 12 "eggs" interspersed throughout the menus, as well as a pair of film-themed DVD-ROM games and a read-along that basically compresses Chicken Run into a 17-minute bedtime story. (They'll also probably be tempted to repeatedly 'push' the "Panic Button," which leads to the same shot of screaming hens every time.)

I must admit to being perplexed by the inclusion of two nearly identical making-of specials, the second of which, "The Hatching of Chicken Run", is slightly less fluffy due to its makers having delved into the "Aardman" vaults to give us glimpses of the company's earliest animated productions. More beneficial to fans is the optional screen-specific commentary by co-directors Peter Lord and Nick Park, who seem to have decided on their respective focus beforehand. (Lord talks mainly about their inspiration, Park technique–or is it the other way around?) Lastly, we have trailers and a TV spot for Chicken Run, in addition to a weird sneak peek at DreamWorks' upcoming CGI spectacular Shrek.

84 minutes; G; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1 EX, English DTS-ES 6.1, English Dolby Surround; English, English SDH, French subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; DreamWorks