Peter Lord and Nick Park turn a chicken coop into a prison camp and make us care about the inmates. The escape-film jokes occasionally stretch thin, but the expressive animation and voices earn our warm recommendation.
Peter Lord and Nick Park treat a chicken’s wish to leave the farm with exactly the seriousness an escape film demands. That seriousness makes Chicken Run funny, and gives us a reason to care beyond finding the chickens amusing. We recommend it warmly, with a small reservation about how far the prison-camp routine can stretch. The stop-motion animation gives each inmate enough personality to keep the idea alive when the script gets comfortable. At 84 minutes, it still has a few stretches that could move faster.
Karey Kirkpatrick’s screenplay borrows the structure of a prisoner-of-war escape film, with a Yorkshire chicken coop serving as the camp. The debt to The Great Escape is clear, but recognising it is not a condition of entry. Ginger has enough determination to make the situation intelligible without a working knowledge of war films. Lord and Park allow these birds their own concerns, rather than making every exchange a nudge towards another film. Much of the humour comes from how seriously the chickens approach getting out.
Phil Lewis’s production design makes the coop convincing as a place of confinement, which gives the escape plans something solid to work against. Cinematographers Tristan Oliver, Dave Alex Riddett and Frank Passingham make the models look substantial enough for us to worry about their safety. The chickens look capable of being hurt, however comical their shapes. More importantly, the faces remain readable: a small change around the eyes can carry a thought without another line of dialogue. The care taken over those expressions matters as much as the larger set pieces.
Julia Sawalha gives Ginger the firmness the film needs at its centre, without making determination sound like a lecture. We were surprised by how much we worried about her. The anxious eyes on that model did it; the face makes the wish to escape feel urgent even when the surrounding scene is funny. Mel Gibson’s Rocky brings a useful dose of self-satisfaction, and his vocal ease gives Sawalha something to push against. Neither performance needs to crowd out the other characters to hold our attention.
Imelda Staunton’s Bunty and Jane Horrocks’s Babs are just as valuable, with sharply different voices that help distinguish the flock. Horrocks is especially good at giving a line its own unhurried pace. That leaves room for a laugh to arrive without everyone competing to announce it. John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams provide music that takes the escape seriously, supporting the tension without apologising for the poultry. Their score helps the action feel consequential even when the premise is at its silliest.
The limitation is that the script sometimes asks another round of escape-film business to do the work of a fresh joke. A little of the early material feels stretched, and the familiarity becomes more noticeable when the laughs are further apart. Editors Mark Solomon, Robert Francis and Tamsin Parry keep the set pieces clear, but cannot quite disguise those thinner passages between them. A sharper cut would help, though haste would also cost some of the voices their individual rhythm. The opening is where that balance needs the most adjustment.
As a family comedy, it trusts the audience to enjoy a slightly peculiar world without having every peculiarity explained. The escape story works because the chickens have become characters whose safety matters to us. There is pleasure in watching their faces even when nobody is speaking, which gives the quieter passages something to offer. Give it an evening when children and adults need to agree on something, and allow the opening a little patience.
