Random Movie Review - Chicken Run

So you've all heard me go on and on about Aardman and how great they are with stop motion films, but now let'd talk about their very first feature film. To everyone's surprise, their first feature film isn't a Wallace and Gromit flick, but rather a more experimental flick to see how they would do on the big screen. Funding was provided by Pathe as well as Dreamworks, the latter of which have wanted to do a film with Aardman for years since they became known in the animation world and not only did it do well, it to this day, remains as the highest grossing stop motion feature film of all time. If that doesn't tell you how good it is, I don't know what will. But anyway, let's review this film:

So the film borrows elements of a typical prison film with a chicken farm being the prison, the chickens (each with their own personalities) being the prisoners and the farmers and their dogs being the wardens. So in this farm, the chickens lay eggs day in, day out and when they stop laying, the farmers kill them. The idea is for the farmers to make a profit on their eggs. During this time, one chicken called Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha) has led the chickens in the hopes to one day escape the farm and find somewhere better to live. She and the other chickens try many times to escape and all have come to fail. But one day, a rooster known as Rocky (voiced by action star Mel Gibson) enters the farm and unwillingly teaches the chickens on how to fly. But when the farmers decide to move from selling eggs to selling chicken pies, their hopes of escaping become more desperate by the day.

This is a great film. Its funny, has the charm of Wallace and Gromit, its action packed, the music makes it big and grand and while there may be a point in the film which has been done many times before, you can't deny that Aardman really do know their stuff. Stop motion films do take years to be made which is more than live action and traditional animated films and it shows how much effort the film makers put into this film. Can't say any more than that. 9/10