If you were a kid in the 2000s, you may have fond memories of watching Chicken Run.
The stop-motion animated film about revolutionary poultry was a loose adaptation of the Steve McQueen classic, The Great Escape. It follows one particularly rebellious hen who will stop at nothing to free her flock from their oppressive farm.
The film is notable for not just being a great kids’ flick, but a genuine must-watch for all ages. There’s a reason the film is pushing a 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Since it’s now streaming on Netflix, Watch With Us breaks down why Chicken Run should be your next watch.
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The Script is Entertaining and Smart for Both Kids and Adults
One of the best things about Chicken Run is that it isn’t just mindless entertainment to put in front of your kids while you tune out and scroll on your phone. Chicken Run is a great film, period, and a huge part of that is due to the screenplay, which doesn’t condescend to its child audience. The writers of Chicken Run respect children as intelligent beings. Instead of writing slop and fart jokes, they pen an affecting story that just happens to center on silly-looking anthropomorphic chickens.
The humor, too, is something that will transcend generational divides by offering more lowbrow humor for the young ones while sneaking in some one-liners that only adults will understand. Those are the best kinds of children’s films — ones that know how to appeal to the sensibilities of kids without patronizing them, while simultaneously offering some more mature content and themes that will make the watch enjoyable for their parents. At the end of the day, the characters may be chickens, but they are incredibly human, and we can see ourselves in them.
The Stop-Motion Animation Is Gorgeous to Look at
Chicken Run is a product of the Aardman animation studio, the preeminent animation studio of England and arguably the producers of some of the best stop-motion claymation of all time (they are also home to the delightful characters of Wallace and Gromit). But the process of stop-motion animation is arguably too grueling for the brain to even process. During the filming and animating of Chicken Run, one minute of the 84-minute film was completed per week.
But that hard work comes through perfectly in the finished product, and stop-motion animation is not just delightful for children to watch, but a true art form that can be appreciated by more mature audiences. That meticulous attention to detail is still on full display in the Chicken Run sequel Dawn of the Nugget. Time did not interfere with the level of craftsmanship that Aardman is known for.
It Has a Surprisingly Progressive Thesis
1963’s The Great Escape stars Steve McQueen as an American soldier who is captured by the Nazis during WWII and who leads a determined escape plan for his fellow captives. That premise serves as the foundation for Chicken Run, with the character of Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha) as the McQueen surrogate. So too does Ginger lead her own revolution against the oppressive forces of her captors, Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy (Tony Haygarth and Miranda Richardson, respectively).
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Thus, the film is imbued with a surprisingly progressive and revolutionary spirit, touching on themes of worker exploitation, resistance, Anti-fascism and feminism. Because while it is a rooster (voiced by Mel Gibson), who seemingly provides the hens with their means to escape (the ultimately false ability to fly), it is the female chickens who craft their escape vessel in part utilizing their stereotypical “woman’s work” skills like sewing and knitting. In the end, Chicken Run may just leave your children with a nagging compulsion to overthrow the powers that be.
Watch Chicken Run now on Netflix.
