Review of Chicken Run

Introduction

Chicken Run, set in Mr & Mrs Tweedy`s Yorkshire chicken farm, is about a chicken called Ginger who wants to lead her friends to freedom, to show them that there`s more to life than laying eggs. They try all manner of escapes without success, until someone special falls into their lap. Rocky. Now they have hope of flying the coop and will stop at nothing, especially since the evil Mrs Tweedy has hatched other plans for them all.

Apparently if you turn your back on chickens, they get up to all sorts. Have you ever seen plastercine chickens working out and doing one armed press-ups?

Video

The video quality of the 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer is simply breathtaking. The colours are vibrant and sharp and really do seem to come to life. I`m stunned, and not since Toy Story 2, A Bug`s Life or Shrek have I seen such sharp digital images with incredible clarity and colours coming through as they do. Everything from the contrast to the shadows and the blacks come through with amazing depth. It`s simply gorgeous to behold, that I spent my time distracted while watching the movie just watching agasp as a bunch of chickens clucked on TV. A brilliant digital transfer which can hardly be faulted, no noticeable signs of compression at all. It`s top notch!

Audio

The opening scene with the music is good, it sets the tone for the rest of the movie that this is no low budget animated movie. The music is well reproduced and completely surrounds you from the start. The same goes for the dialogue. This is well spaced out and comes from all speakers giving you the impression of being surrounded by chickens! Both the DTS track and the DD track sound good. I would have scored a point higher, except the Director`s Commentary could have the sound level and mix improved. See below.

Features

A nice animated menu featuring: Scene Selection, English subtitles, three trailers (including the Chicken Impossible Trailer which is funny), Chicken Run game trailer and quite bit more. The Aardman Archive contains clips of a whole range of Aardman animations dating from 1971 (Nick Park`s work from thirty years ago!) to the present day including the Creature Comforts, Morph, the Heat Electric ad campaign, The Wrong Trousers and more. It`s quite good to include all these little clips.

The Director`s commentary is interesting, but I wish that they would lower the sound level of the film in the background since it`s difficult to hear everything clearly. I had to rewind here and there just to catch things. Plus, the commentary track comes from both Director`s in the front left and front right channels, this I found to be quite distracting as I wanted to focus on the screen action and hear what they had to say, it would have been better to mix the sound for the centre speaker.

`Chickens Go in, Pies Come Out` is the name of one of the featurettes, and this shows the painstaking amount of hard work which goes into this movie. Then there`s `Fowl Play`, the making of Chicken Run which runs for about twenty minutes.

This DVD also has quite a few DVD-Rom features too. I won`t go into detail here, it`ll take all day and I don`t want to bore you! There`s Creating a Character; To Camera; Film Language; Storyboard to Script and Study Guide. This is a truly interactive affair and I`ve never seen anything quite like it. It`s got to be seen to be believed! There are sections where you can create/cut your own film sequence by dragging scenes and playing it back, edit it, play it back etc. and it gives an overview of basic techniques. Plus there`s the voiceover stuff, and the film clips that play out too. There`s a wealth of stuff here, incredible!

The Study Guide - This is quite interesting. This is basically a study and quiz guide aimed at youngsters. You`re presented with colourful information (.pdf`s) with detail on the filmmaking and you`re asked to participate in group exercises to give thought to the film process and what makes this different to other films. There`s also character analysis, story analysis...the list goes on. A very interesting concept and one that milks the film for all its worth. Kids interested in the nitty-gritty are going to like this. This is definitely one up for Dreamworks/Pathe/Aardman, the DVD-ROM portion is fabtastic! It all adds up to an incredible package of extras for DVD.

Conclusion

This is an enjoyable film, well scripted and charming. "Over paid, over sexed, and over here" to quote Fowler of Mel Gibson`s Rocky. The chickens are idealistic which is something we immediately side with and the pathos is painted all over, this is one of the reasons why I think the film works.

I thought the voice talent was good and not seeing the actors in the flesh did detach their usual on screen personalities. Usually with animation, the voice talent influence the design of their characters, but this isn`t really the case with Chicken Run, and it works well enough. Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha, Tim Spall and especially Jane Horrocks do a great job. It was quite amusing to hear Mel scream, "Freedom!". Good character design, not straying too far off what Aardman have created before in Wallace and Gromit. I particularly like the pie making machine scene, I do like a good pie...

I like this movie. Even watching it again now I`m glad I bought it. It`s not the most original story, but it`s nicely re-told with more than a nod to old classics. Though it`s unlike a lot of movies in terms of the physical characters, the underlying story will be familiar to all, and I think this is where there is cross appeal to both kids and grown ups. It`s easy to identify with and it works for me, and I`m no chicken. This is a nice package with tons of extras that barely got a look in from most reviews that I`ve seen. It`s pure fun, definitely more appeal to a younger audience in the long term, so if you`ve got kids, they`ll watch it at least a hundred times a day and will still love it. I think it`s worth adding to a collection.