Chicken Run

 Rating: ****/*****, or 8/10

First full length feature film from the much beloved and critically acclaimed British Aardman Animations studio, which specializes in traditional claymation and stop motion animation (though the studio has since also made a foray into digital animation, to lesser appeal). Applying an otherwise rather grim story concerning the horrors of the bio-industry with the much needed levity via typical British humor, as Aardman did to great success before on their various Wallace & Gromit shorts, Chicken Run is both an hommage to classic escape films like Stalag 17 and The Great Escape and a very fun family film all ages can easily enjoy. On Mrs. Tweedy's chicken farm, a brutal regime rules the lives of a group of chicks who desperately want out and keep coming up with one bizarre escape attempt after another. All of these fail, but things brighten up when an American rooster (voiced by Mel Gibson) from a circus crashes the place one day. However, the opportunist cock may not be the much desired ticket out of the chicks' dreadful confinement. Though Chicken Run won a fair amount of prizes it was sadly snubbed at the Academy Awards. Aardman made sure this blatant oversight was corrected when the even funnier Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit took home the much deserved trophy five years later.

Starring: Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha, Miranda Richardson

Directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park

UK: Aardman Animations, 2000