Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Chicken Run I have always enjoyed Claymation films and this movie is no exception. I appreciate the time and effort it took to make every scene of this movie. You must give the creators and artists credit for the love they must have had for this movie to be able to create this. One thing that I loved about this movie was how well sound was used. The sounds gave a very realistic feel to the film when in actuality it was a cartoon with a pretty unrealistic premise. I also thought the voice acting was very good and fit in well with the Claymation characters. This provided a good flow to the film. One thing that was very prominent in the film was cutting for continuity. One example of this is when Mr. Tweedy was building the pie machine. The film would cut to different parts of him building and repairing it to show the passage of time without taking time from the story that could be used elsewhere. I enjoyed the premise of the story too. It is very original and when it came out it had not been used very often. When I first watched this film when I was very young enjoyed its comedic elements and fast paced story. Watching it no, as an adult, I enjoy the humor of the jokes and many of the dramatic aspects that I did not quite pick up on as a child. I found that the fast paced story was very easy to follow but and kept the audience entertained, but it was not too fast as to feel rushed and incomplete. Chicken Run had a very Classical Paradigm in that its structure was very simple. This structure is very common in fiction movies and this is prime example. The story follows from the intro and introducing the film through the plot and finally to the climax and closing. One of my favorite scenes was when Rocky was in the pie making machine. In this scene a lot is going on. There is so much motion going on that you would think that you would become distracted and lose focus on the point but because of how it was filmed your eye is always drawn to Rocky and what he is doing. The story of this film may also be paralleled to the concentration camps of World War 2. The chickens representing the Jews and other captives and the Tweedys representing the Nazi's. As the chickens realize that the end is near they must find a way to escape from their oppressors. I believe that what the chickens felt during this film can be paralleled with the feelings of many of those who perished in the camps.

The beginning of the film strongly sets the tone of the rest of the film. Using the first escape attempt to show that the situation of Ginger and her friends as effectively hopeless. While I could see it being argued that the opening montages are supposed to just instill in us the great idea of hope that they all have. However the way the depict the entire setting shows me that we are to believe that hope is futile and escape is impossible. The very opening shot shows us a very literal prison camp. Anyone who did not know what they were going to watch would be surprised to find out that the grounds with barbed wire, rows of cabins, and a guard with terrifying dogs under the moonlight is actually just a chicken farm, and this lends to the comedic effect in a way but more importantly leaves you with a clear message: leaving is impossible. This gets enforced by the very entertaining montage of escape attempts that follow. The clever use of comedy to distract from the underlying hopelessness the characters face is masterfully done. The best part comes at the end of the first montage when the comedy fades. Suddenly nothing is funny, and a friend of theirs dies as is normal around there. Nothing has changed. For a moment there just isn't something funny to distract you from the gravity of the situation and it is very masterfully done. The introduction of the character Rocky is both one of my favorite and least favorite moments of the movie. His arrival and the belief of the other chickens that he can fly leads the characters to have hope that as an audience we know is pointless. The chickens believe their situation has changed entirely, but we as an audience know that chickens can't fly and that they have false hope. This works to enforce the previously established message: Escape is impossible. But more importantly it raises tensions. As an audience it is in our nature to root for the protagonist so it causes a kind of stress to work towards something they won't achieve for such a long portion of the movie especially with an approaching deadline of sorts. we are left wondering "How will they escape?" because we desperately want to believe that they can and will escape. This build in tension is wonderful and effective, but is also slow taking roughly half the time of the movie in total. When it reaches its peak during Ginger and Rocky's escape scene within the pie machine we are left in a rift of sorts. With Rocky having left the next morning and all the chickens fighting we are feeling the same hopelessness as Ginger in that moment where we question if they can actually escape. And then my favorite part of the film is the race that follows. After all the previous tension built and was released we are now faced with this race against the clock. It has the same effect as the previous tension building section but occuring in a third of the time. And more importantly unlike the beginning of the film most of this new plan of the chickens being carried out occurred in sunlight filling the scene with bright colors and hope drawing on the power of mise-en-scène to affect how we perceive the events. And of course from there the film follows the usual steps of any classical story with a climax, etc. Now I mentioned that Rocky's appearance in the film also highlighted my least favorite aspect of the film, and that aspect is an out of place romance. The character of Rocky is a typical masculine roll in charge, aloof, and confident. He is also uncomfortable with how assertive and in charge Ginger prefers to be. This is an archaic trope for films to have an in charge female character who will be "Tamed" and/or "put in her place" by a man and somehow that is romance. I won't fault Chicken Run for including the specific trope it is nearly twenty years old now however having a romance in general feels like a mistake. It was out of place with all the other themes. Missing the necessary elements to be a romantic comedy which requires the focus of the film to be on the two romanticized characters. It also seems contrary with the characterization and actions of the character himself. Rocky having done a lot of wrong and a little right came far from redeeming himself completely, and it all ended with a romance that felt wedged in between other great movie elements.Overall Chicken Run is a wonderfully hilarious comedy borrowing elements from other serious movies like any other comedy but comes with unique ability to apply them effectively but is still not free from the film pitfall that all movies must contain the elements of a heteronormative romance.

Chicken Run is, quite honestly, an egg-cellent work of comedy, and a movie that impressed me a lot more than I expected it to, and I highly recommend watching it if you haven't already. I don't like summary, but to talk about it I should probably at least outline the film: it takes place on a chicken farm that is portrayed as a prison from the view of the chickens, who make up the bulk of the characters in the film. The movie is about the chickens and their various attempts to escape. Ok, barebones summary out of the way, the movie does a bunch of things that blew me away and really impressed me. The first of these, and the most immediately apparent, is the visual style of the movie: it is entirely claymation. Now, the only times I had seen claymation used before, I...wasn't impressed with it. However, the way they do claymation in Chicken Run is amazing, in that it is simply so expressive and detailed. The love and hard work that the creators of the movie had poured into the clay figures was immediately apparent with how detailed they looked, in spite of their simple, cartoonish, looks--it honestly felt like I was watching a 3D version of one of the Saturday morning cartoons I watched as a kid. The amount of different poses, expressions, and even effects that the filmmakers were able to do astounded me, and honestly endeared me to this style of animation. Beyond that though, the thing that I loved most about this film--and the aspect of the film that makes it stand out as much as it does--is the STELLAR writing in the film. I went in expecting a simple movie that was clearly intended for kids, and as a result the movie took me for one hell of a ride. This movie had me scared, mad, and sobbing at various points throughout, and even more often had me tearing up in laughter--but even better, I was invested in what was happening, a lot more than I am with more recent films. And honestly, this was due to the writing. The characters in the film, some of them one-notes though they may be, honestly felt so articulate and alive at times, and this was emphasized by the stellar voice work (the accent work fit each and every character to a T). I found myself getting so engrossed in their plight, and rooting for their success the entire time, and it was absolutely fantastic. Hell, I even was invested in the romance between Ginger and Rocky, as out of place as a romance subplot was in this movie--and normally I loathe out-of-place romantic subplots. But the best part is that I felt each and every character was done right, even the one-notes. For example, the antagonists were written to work perfectly with each other, and despite being farmers as the villains, still struck me with fear. The bumbling, fumbling, dunderhead that was Mr. Tweedy was an excellently-written foil to the dastardly and diabolical Mrs. Tweedy, yet even in scenes where Mr. Tweedy was the only antagonist present, he still felt menacing--something I applaud, honestly. I was also endeared to the other characters; from the silliness of the hens to the military rigidity of Ginger's father, to the rats, who were simultaneously lovable and hateable, I found myself loving each and every one of them. The biggest praise that I can give to this movie, and the greatest testament I can provide that speaks to how good it is, is that even after watching it once I not only am able to applaud it so much, but also truly wish to applaud it. It is an excellent film, and I highly recommend it.

Chicken run is in the details. What starts and ends as a parody of "The Great Escape" continuously picks up unique elements along the way, developing its own reputation as a solid, feel-good movie. Both Chicken Run and The Great Escape feature a collection of prisoners, summoned to roll call, living in numbered shacks in captivity. Both feature one character repeatedly trying to escape. Both feature the escaping character repeatedly being caught. When caught, both characters are put in solitary confinement, where both characters pass the time by bouncing a ball off the opposite wall. Both feature stealing bed slats to construct a tunnel as an attempt at escape. Both use a wood stove as the cover to the secret tunnel. Both feature the British Royal Air Force - In The Great Escape, all the prisoners are captured airmen; Chicken Run only features one RAF member. In a subtler reference, The Great Escape shows a character using his pants to sneak dirt out of the tunnel - Chicken Run shows a character using their pants to smuggle bolts and supplies in for the chicken's final escape attempt. The tunnel escape, However, is where Chicken Run begins to take on an identity of its own. The Chickens, unlike the captured british airmen, do not manage to escape. Some plot points are fairly obvious to older viewers (Rocky can't fly) or unoriginal (Rocky's decision to return); however they provide clues that younger viewers will delight to find on their inevitable re-watches. The Hen House transforming into a plane, meanwhile, is a surprise I doubt many saw coming. Looking back, clues were provided - no view of the project during the construction montage but walls of the house - but the cinematography setup the surprise very well, showing construction without raising suspicion of what was being constructed. The film accomplishes something very unique in terms of suspense. Younger audiences will realize the characters are risking death, and will be riveted. In most films targeted towards children, suspense will decrease as the viewing age increases. However, in Chicken Run, the older audiences realize just how gruesome the danger is. Suspense in Chicken Run, as a result, does not decrease with age. I found myself just as terrified at the pie machine as I was when much younger. As a child, death was constant - being trapped in the oven, falling into the blades, being crushed by the roller - all ended in the same result. As an adult, Roasting to death, being drawn into a woodchipper, and being trapped as a steam-roller draws nearer are all as if not more terrifying. Mrs. Tweedy being trapped in the gravy tank as the gravy level rose was particularly fear-inducing. In terms of suspense, Chicken Run provides something for all age levels. The small details presented in the film are what takes Chicken Run from a simple story to a beautiful piece of art. Most obviously are the numerous references to The Great Escape. Less obviously are little things, like the drive shaft of the delivery truck that brings the pie machine. Placing the camera on the ground pointed upwards to show the rotating parts underneath is an unnecessary item that helps keep the already engaging stop motion even more visually attractive. The two black market rats are named Nick and Fetcher respectively. "Nick" in british english means to steal, and "Fetcher" means ones who procures. The rats do exactly that, stealing items from the Tweedy's household to sell. Nick's character wears a suit jacket that zips up, with the zipper displayed prominently on the front. At first glance, it looks exactly like a tie. Inside the barn, an incredible amount of detail work went into the backgrounds and the pie making machine. Shovels lean against the walls, tools hang from boards, work benches accumulate dust. Gears and pipes span left and right, Metal supports have holes in them exactly as a real structure would. Chicken Run's small details make it a visual masterpiece, with every scene hiding something to look for. If the suspense and plot don't satisfy, watching for the hidden gems in the set certainly will.