Chicken Run

Mel Gibson - Rocky the Rooster (voice)
Julia Sawalha - Ginger (voice)
Miranda Richardson - Mrs. Tweedy (voice)
John Sharian - Circus Man (voice)
Tony Haygarth - Mr.Tweedy (voice)
Jane Horrocks - Babs (voice)
Timothy Spall - (voice)
Imelda Staunton - Bunty (voice)

Chicken Run is the first Hollywood-backed feature by multi-Oscar-winning Brit animation house Aardman, but even the most ardent fan of Wallace And Gromit won't find too much to gripe about here. Only the slightly contrived inclusion of Mel Gibson as the voice of daredevil braggart Rocky The Rooster might be seen as a concession to the mainstream, although his integration into the story is as logical as anything else in a world of talking chickens.

On the run from a nearby travelling circus, Rocky seems to offer the promise of escape to Ginger (Julia Sawalha) and her fellow inmates. But he can't quite walk it like he talks it, leading to much blowhard bluffing and botched breakout attempts. More damningly, perhaps, the plot relies more on traditional slapstick than stock character types - the Cockney wide-boy rats (Phil Daniels and Timothy Spell), for instance - than previous Aardman work. But in fairness the studio's uniquely British brand of humour has scarcely been diluted at all. And there remains a slightly damp air of 1950s provincial English understatement to proceedings: milky tea, cardigans, hissing wireless sets, the whole Alan Bennett universe. Marvellous.

The adult stuff in Chicken Run is less sharp, it mostly bolls down to knowing visual nods to great WW2 prison-camp movies, especially The Great Escape. It's largely gentle, universal stuff, but thankfully free of sentiment or condescension. The script might have been tighter and the pace snappier in its opening half, but the arrival of a nightmarish pie-making machine introduces a welcome element of Tim Burton-esque sado-surrealism. For now, Aardman's Hollywood debut is a minor triumph of English eccentricity over globalised banality.
Review© Stephen Dalton.