Chicken Run is a 2000 stop-motion animation British film made by the Aardman Animations studios (which produced the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit films).
Background
Chicken Run tells the humorous story of a band of chickens who seek to escape from their coop before their owners, the dim-witted egg farmer, Mr Tweedy, and his greedy, overbearing wife Mrs Tweedy, turn them all into chicken pies, as she is not making enough money by selling eggs.
The film proved a success with both children and adults, and showed that Peter Lord and Nick Park had the ability to handle the technical and writing challenges posed by a feature film, and thereby serving as a test bed for the 2005 movie outing for Wallace and Gromit, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Plot
The Tweedys run a failing chicken farm in Lancashire, England, the chickens producing fewer eggs than previously, and Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) kills those chickens that fail to make their quota. Mrs. Tweedy decides to change the farm’s production, moving into the making of chicken pies instead of selling eggs. The chickens themselves live in a World War II prison-like fenced area, and one chicken, Ginger (Julia Sawalha), continues to try to escape the coop with the help of the other chickens and a pair of rats that help get them contraband for numerous plans, but always ends up getting caught and put into solitary confinement by Mr. Tweedy. Ginger realizes that the only way to escape for good is to fly over the fence, something that chickens cannot do.
One day, an American rooster named Rocky Rhodes (Mel Gibson) falls into the chicken coop. Though the other chickens fawn over him, Ginger is able to learn that he just escaped from a nearby circus, and that he claims to be able to fly. Ginger insists he teach the rest of them how to fly despite his wing being injured when he landed. Rocky leads the chickens on several seemingly-futile exercises to help prepare them to fly. When the pie-making machine is delivered to the farm, Ginger realizes they must escape soon, and presses Rocky to help them escape. After Mr. Tweedy finished constructing the machine, Mrs. Tweedy immediately selects Ginger as the first chicken to be used in the machine, but she is saved by Rocky, disabling the machine.
While Mr. Tweedy repairs the machine, Ginger discovers that Rocky has fled, leaving behind part of a circus poster that shows that he was only a stunt rooster, “flying” out of a cannon at the circus, and does not know how to actually fly. Ginger becomes dejected, willing to give into fate, until she recalls that Fowler, the farm’s rooster, was an honourary member of the Royal Air Force, and has been around aeroplanes. With the help of the other chickens, they quickly begin a plan to build an aeroplane, using all their resources to build it while Mr. Tweedy is fixing the pie machine.
When Mr. Tweedy finishes the repairs, the chickens launch their plan, disabling Mr. Tweedy when he went to get the chickens to prevent him warning his wife, and assembling their plane. The plane prepares to take off as Mr. Tweedy gets free, but he is hit on the head as Rocky, riding a tricycle, returns back to the farm to help Ginger and the others. Mrs. Tweedy catches up and grabs onto a string of lights handing from the plane as it takes off, and attempts to chop Ginger’s head off with a hatchet. Ginger manages to cause Mrs. Tweedy to chop the string of lights in two, and Mrs. Tweedy falls away from the plane into the pie-making machine, causing it to rupture from pressure build-up and taking it, as well as much of the barn it was in. The chickens celebrate as they fly away. Sometime later, they have found a wide open pasture to live in and raising their chicks, with Ginger and Rocky becoming a couple.
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