From the creators of Wallace and Gromit comes Chicken Run. Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that. David Sproxton and Peter Lord founded Aardman Animations in 1972 and created several popular claymation shows. Nick Park created Wallace and Gromit in 1980 as a student project, but didn't finish it until 1985 after he joined Aardman. When I think of that kind of animation, including the Chevron commercials, I think of Wallace and Gromit and Nick Park. But really most of the other stuff is Aardman and Nick is one of the main employees.

Anyway, Chicken Run is set sometime after World War II but not too long after, either that or it's just set in a more rural part of England than the norm. The bumbling Mr Tweedy and his greedy wife Mrs Tweedy run a small chicken farm, making a living selling eggs like Mr Tweedy's father and his father before him. But Mrs Tweedy has a plan to raise herself out of her miserable existence, one that will require turning the chickens into chicken pot pies.

The movie starts off by introducing Ginger, a plucky and determined hen who wants to break out of the farm and take all the other chickens with her. But time and again she is caught and spends a bit of time in solitary, some sort of coal bin, before being sent back to the farm. The chicken farm itself is modeled after a German prison camp, complete barbed wire-topped fences, watch towers, and barracks. Appropriately enough, Ginger lives in Chicken Coop 17.

Like any good prison escape movie, there are various stock characters. There's the smart, nerdy hen with glasses, the one that designs all the contraptions used in making escape attempts. There's the fat hen who vacillates between enthusiasm and criticism for the various escape attempts, the stupid hen who knits all the time and thinks that all the hens taken have "gone on holiday". There's an old rooster, a veteran of the RAF, who tries to maintain military discipline and talks often about the good old days. There are also two rats who can slip in and out of the prison and, for a price, "aquire" required items needed by the chickens.

But how to get out of the coop? Ginger wonders while taking a late night stroll one night, after once again expending great efforts to convince the rest of the hens to support her next escape plan. Her prayers are seemingly answered as she looks up in the sky to see a rooster flying through the air. But Rocky flies into a weathervane and is flung into the chicken yard, injuring his wing. Rocky the Rooster is an American from Rhode Island who flies from farm to farm showing off his flying skills.

Ginger tries to convince Rocky to teach the rest of the hens how to fly, and finally gets him to help as she discovers that Rocky is on the run. The last 2/3rds of the movie is spent working on this last escape attempt, racing against the Tweedy's before they finish assembling the chicken pot pie machine.

This is a cleverly done movie, suitable for kids and adults as evidenced by the laughter of both types of viewers when I saw Chicken Run. It's particularly nice to have the chickens living in the real world. Mr Tweedy has suspicions that the chickens are organizing, but Mrs Tweedy has bullied him into believing that all the weird things he sees are all in his head. I particularly liked the old rooster's explanation for his RAF service.

So once again this is a good movie to watch, especially if you've seen such movies as Stalag 17 and The Great Escape. But even if you haven't there are plenty laughs and action to satisfy almost any viewer.