This is certainly an interesting way for Aardman to have jumped into feature films. Rather than a Wallace and Gromit movie as their first film, we get a grim parody of the prison-escape genre starring a band of hens trapped on a farm.
Ginger is the de facto leader of the farm's chickens who are monitored for their egg production and killed if they do not lay for a minimum of a week straight by the cold and tyrannical English farmer Mrs. Tweedy. Her husband enforces the chickens and cuts off Ginger's many escape plans. When Rocky, a rooster, flies into the farm one night after escaping his circus job, Ginger contracts him to teach them to fly while he demonstrates little concern about their peril.
The film is notable for its departures from Aardman's standard. It gets heavy. The film doesn't play lightly with the idea that the chickens are prisonsers—indeed, it goes all the way by depicting them as metaphorical captives in a P.O.W camp. The stakes are played seriously, a couple of shots are pitch-dark imagery, and Mrs. Tweedy is probably Aardman's most terrifying villain. If anything, the conclusion of the film doesn't go conclusively grim enough for the villain. That's the only place where it feels like a punch was pulled.
However, it is still Aardman. They're a studio that runs on parody, and that's what this film is, running on every prison escape trope it can and making it silly with sapient chickens hiding their efforts from human patrollers. Puns are everywhere and there's some wonderful slapstick and visual comedy all around, and the actual solution to escaping is satisfyingly grand and built up well.
The cast is good. I really enjoy how this film is female-led, with the protagonists and primary villain all being female characters, which is especially atypical for a jail/war movie. The male lead, Rocky, is as metaphorical of a cock as he is by species, and while he helps out, his arc is predictable and largely secondary to the initiative and ingenuity of Ginger and her female friends who get most of their work done without him. The film could have worked without Rocky altogether since he's not given the best chemistry with Ginger and happened to be voiced by a notoriously unpleasant actor, but his implementation in the plot does feel aware that the ladies have got it 90% covered by themselves.
This is a fun film that executes a dark parodic metaphor with aplomb. It's not my favorite work by Aardman, but it's good.
WesternAnimation How does a chicken fly the coop?
This is certainly an interesting way for Aardman to have jumped into feature films. Rather than a Wallace and Gromit movie as their first film, we get a grim parody of the prison-escape genre starring a band of hens trapped on a farm.
Ginger is the de facto leader of the farm's chickens who are monitored for their egg production and killed if they do not lay for a minimum of a week straight by the cold and tyrannical English farmer Mrs. Tweedy. Her husband enforces the chickens and cuts off Ginger's many escape plans. When Rocky, a rooster, flies into the farm one night after escaping his circus job, Ginger contracts him to teach them to fly while he demonstrates little concern about their peril.
The film is notable for its departures from Aardman's standard. It gets heavy. The film doesn't play lightly with the idea that the chickens are prisonsers—indeed, it goes all the way by depicting them as metaphorical captives in a P.O.W camp. The stakes are played seriously, a couple of shots are pitch-dark imagery, and Mrs. Tweedy is probably Aardman's most terrifying villain. If anything, the conclusion of the film doesn't go conclusively grim enough for the villain. That's the only place where it feels like a punch was pulled.
However, it is still Aardman. They're a studio that runs on parody, and that's what this film is, running on every prison escape trope it can and making it silly with sapient chickens hiding their efforts from human patrollers. Puns are everywhere and there's some wonderful slapstick and visual comedy all around, and the actual solution to escaping is satisfyingly grand and built up well.
The cast is good. I really enjoy how this film is female-led, with the protagonists and primary villain all being female characters, which is especially atypical for a jail/war movie. The male lead, Rocky, is as metaphorical of a cock as he is by species, and while he helps out, his arc is predictable and largely secondary to the initiative and ingenuity of Ginger and her female friends who get most of their work done without him. The film could have worked without Rocky altogether since he's not given the best chemistry with Ginger and happened to be voiced by a notoriously unpleasant actor, but his implementation in the plot does feel aware that the ladies have got it 90% covered by themselves.
This is a fun film that executes a dark parodic metaphor with aplomb. It's not my favorite work by Aardman, but it's good.