While “The Nuggets Menace” is looming on Netflix, (re)discover “Chicken Run” first of its name, already available on the famous platform.
Every night, for many years, Ginger has made a new escape attempt. This laying hen who has spent her entire life in Mother Tweedy’s fenced farm dreams of the great outdoors and green valleys. Her thirst for freedom takes on an urgent character each time she sees the least productive of her peers go to the chopping block.
While all her friends seem to have lowered their wings and accepted their fate, Ginger sees her hope reborn when Rocky, a lone rooster boy, crashes in mid-flight in the henhouse. Perhaps this smooth talker, a little full of himself, will be able to teach the poor prisoners to steal before Mother Tweedy has perfected her terrifying machine for making… chicken pies!
Directed in 2000 by the famous Nick Park and Peter Lord, Chicken Run is the very first feature film from the prestigious British animation studio Aardman. After 28 years of existence refining their art in excellent short and medium-length films, these model filmmakers with a keen sense of detail, irresistible humor and, above all, unfailing patience, can finally see the fruit of their efforts pass through the doors of dark rooms.
Specialists in stop-motion (or frame-by-frame animation, this noble but delicate technique which requires extreme endurance), the artists of Aardman made themselves known thanks to the little adventures of their indescribable mascots: Wallace and Gromit.
Even if they devoted a feature film worthy of the name to them five years later, they nevertheless decided to innovate for their first film on the big screen, and thus offered their audience a masterful parody of The Great Escape… with chickens!
Dreamworks Animation
Equipped with a scenario that is brilliant in its simplicity, a range of extremely endearing characters, a hectic pace and perfectly balanced humor which never forgets to fade away to make way for emotion when necessary, This first attempt at cinema by Park and Lord stands out as a true masterstroke.
This farming adventure, of formidable efficiency, is urgently worth discovering (or rediscovering) as a family, while waiting for the sequel – Chicken Run: the Nuggets Menace – which will be available on Netflix from December 15.
What they will like…
- The numerous escape plans concocted by Ginger, and the spirit of cohesion that emerges from the small group
- The jokes that constantly come up in the film, notably made by the excellent Colonel Poulard, by the adorable Bernadette, and by the two rats Ric and Rac
Dreamworks Animation
What might worry them…
- The scene at the chopping block, at the beginning of the film, when one of the hens (which no longer lays eggs) has its head cut off. A sequence that we advise you to spare for the little ones, even if everything happens more or less off-camera
- The terrible mother Tweedy, truly evil, even if her cruelty is offset by the stupidity of her poor husband
(Re)discover the trailer for “Chicken Run: The Nuggets Menace”…