In Chicken Run, when hens of a feather plot together, chickens fly the coop! Chicken Run parodies the 1963 World War II movie The Great Escape, in which the Germans made the mistake of consolidating a group of Allied officers -- all of them break-out artists -- in a single prison camp. The camp Kommandeur explains, "You might say, ve have put all our bad eggs in one basket." Egg-xactly. 

The Tweedy Egg Farm, although located in England, duplicates the German camp. The nighttime opening scene starts with a close-up of barbed wire, then pans back, revealing the entire bleak camp with numbered hutches. Like the POWs, these chicks want out! As slave labor they lay eggs daily, then end up as the "chicken in every pot." Mrs. Tweedy and her weekly egg counts evoke dread. From chicken eye level Mrs. Tweedy fits the "Kommandeur" role -- her black boots, her tall and skinny form, her "lean and hungry look."  

What happens if you fail to meet the weekly quota? The chicken skeleton, formerly known as Edwina, sitting on the Tweedys' dinner table says it all. 

A series of fowled-up escapes open the movie. After so many failures, the hens lose heart, ignoring their leader Ginger's plea to carry on. They realize the only answer is "going over" the wire. How? Flying! But -- major problem -- chickens can't fly! 

Or can they? While a dispirited Ginger stands outside staring at an unreachable sky, a flying rooster soars earthward and crashes into a feeder -- Rocky (a.k.a. the "Lone Free Ranger"), a cocky Rhode Island Red on the lam. In exchange for a hiding place, Rocky promises the hens flying lessons. Every chick but Ginger falls for this smooth-talking, chest-beating Yank. 

Meanwhile, escape become imperative. Mrs. Tweedy, hungry for higher profits, buys a chicken pie-making machine. "The chickens go in and the pies come out," she tells her henpecked husband, ignoring his warnings about an incipient henhouse revolt. 

Co-directors Peter Lord and Nick Park's innovative animation creates Ginger, Rocky and the others. The technique, a form of stop-motion animation known as "Clay-mation," requires painstakingly moving the clay-like characters bit by bit for each frame. The crew worked on Chicken Run for approximately three years before the picture hit the big screen. Their attention to detail pays off in the characters' lifelike movements and nuanced facial expressions. Actors Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha (of Absolutely Fabulous fame), and Miranda Richardson provide the voices for Rocky, Ginger and Mrs. Tweedy, respectively. 

The action romps through the atmospheric barnyard sets. Ginger and Rocky's harrowing slide through the whirring, cutting, grinding, gravy-spouting chicken pie machine lampoons Indiana Jones' mad dash through the booby-trapped tunnel in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Chicken puns fly like feathers. Rocky tells Ginger, "I've met some hard-boiled dames, but you must be twenty minutes." The Great Escape references abound, including Steve McQueen's famous motorcycle vault over the barbed wire barricade at the Swiss border. 

The themes of yearning for freedom and overcoming physical limitations keep you rooting for the fowls. See this fantasy of flight!

Lynn I. Miller

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