Chicken Run

Rating:
Summary: 4 AND A HALF STARS....good clay animation
Review: We don't find a film like this everyday DO we?? If you like chickens who want to escape a farm from a couple that you would be surprised got married!! Mrs. Tweedy builds a pie machine where, and I quote, "chickens go in, pies come out". This film must've taken a looooong time to make. DAVE'S ALL NEW WITH THE TWEEDYS'!! The chicken's have to escape from the farm and become free. It's just good clay animation if you like THAT at least. I DO. I love it. I wish I was in the clay animation business....

Rating:
Summary: Funny, not fowl in the least
Review: Animal rights activists, take heart: Your fervor has spread to the chickens. English chickens at that (with good teeth). Take the elements of HOME ON THE RANGE (a showbiz farm animal arriving to save the day--and it's Mel Gibson), THE GREAT ESCAPE, STALAG 17 (the chickens live in coop 17), some typical Disney yearning to be free monologues, brilliant clay animation, and some wry humor plus one of the best villainesses since Cruella De Vil, Mrs. Tweedy, who literally henpecks her husband (brighter than she gives him credit for)...ah, you have a great, entertaining romp. It has some of the sensibility of Nickelodeon's '90s series "Count Duckula."

Rating:
Summary: Funny
Review: One my faviorate movies. The story of the film is about a British chicken who wants freedom from farm life. She makes different plots which are all fail due to her ineffective support of other chickens. This continues thill an american rooster comes by mistake to the farm, and tries to help them to get out.
Behind the funny jokes about chicken and farm life, is the story of a persistant being who wants a better life.

Rating:
Summary: movies that take place in one small area usualy stink.
Review: this movie is all aout chickens living in a pen and awaiting execution.like there was some sicko animater who didnt want to get the facts to do a movie on world war 2 so he used imagery and symbolism instead.the entire movie is in a chicken pen.thats not very exiting.the kids watch it like they watch animals at the zoo.theyre cool for a few minutes then thats it.its done in claymation.a lot of people cant even stand to look at that stuff.anyhow,a stunt performer crashlands in the pen and instills the chickens full of false hope.they begin to belive he can really get them out before execution day.he doent know squat though.will kids like a ,movie all about death?i doubt it.i guess the upfront message is all about vegetarianism and the subtle animal farm rip off message is all about ww2.all in all this movie SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: If you want to see a good movie, you'll love this!
Review: Take a group of diverse prisoners, Brits and Yanks, with great nicknames, who desperately try to escape their evil captors. It is their duty to escape - to revolt! Then they realize there is more than freedom at stake. Their very lives are on the line unless they break free. It may be possible for one or two to get away, but the plan is to leave no one behind. Imagine the cast of characters: the super courageous prisoner, the instigator, the intellect, the creative engineer type, the flake, the old soldier. Every time they attempt an inventive, seemingly effective method to reach freedom - they're caught. And the same brave, never-say-die prisoner always pays by spending time in solitary confinement. Then time runs out and the pressure is on as never before. Have you seen the film? "The Great Escape? No! It's "Chicken Run."

Sure. It really works. Just substitute a bunch of sympathetic chickens, and a rooster, for Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson. Stay with me now. The WWII Nazi prison camp is a chicken farm where the poor poultry are forced to lay their daily quota of eggs or they become Sunday dinner. The Tweedys (the couple who run the farm) make terrific Nazis, especially when they decide to turn the farm into a chicken pot pie factory. They're going to cook their goose...err, chickens. "Rocky the Flying Rooster," (known as Steve McQueen in a former life), arrives just in time to give the hens hope.

This is not your typical animated cartoon film. "Chicken Run" is animated using actual clay figures in stop-motion. This procedure is much more complicated than drawn animation. Directors Peter Lord and Nick Park are experts in the field and the effects are wonderful. The sets and backdrops are extremely detailed and have the gray, weathered look of a POW camp.

If one peels away a few layers, this is more than a comical remake of the Great Escape meets Stalag 17. When the instigator chicken, Ginger, tries to motivate her coop-mates to escape, she urges them to change their entire way of thinking. She asks them to think out-of-the-box. To think beyond changing location. For chickens who, unlike human prisoners, have never experienced life outside chicken wire, the concept of green grass that feels good under their claws, is as new as the idea of what it means to be free.

I can't imagine anyone not enjoying "Chicken Run." It truly is a film for kids of all ages.
JANA

Rating:
Summary: Great animation, but it's a big rip-off of A BUG'S LIFE
Review: Okay, let's see here...the carnival performer(s) pretending to be warriors/saviors, the "major' with the british accent, the bird in Bug's life, the plane in chicken run -- I mean come on people this last one is sooo bad. Somebody needs to stop playing in the clay box for a few hours and put on the thinking cap. If I'd written a Bug's Life I'd look into a lawsuit. Incidentally Bug's Life was just a pale reflection of Seven Samurai, Magnificent Seven, and Three Amigos is funnier. One last thought. The machine contraption in Chicken run is cool.