The funny little chickens are back this evening on Gulli.
While Aardman studios regularly deliver animated gems (Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep…), Gulli allows us to rediscover this evening Chicken Run, the studio's first feature film (before that, they had already produced notable shorts). The move to the long format has in no way dampened the spirit of the studio with this delirious story of the escape of a group of chickens, threatened with going to the pan and becoming pies because of their tyrannical owner, Mrs Tweedy and her husband who lives in her shadow.
An animated classic which has recently been given a sequel, once again very inventive, on Netflix: The Nuggets Menace.
Chicken Run 2: “It didn’t have to be just a James Bond pastiche” [interview]
Built on a very sharp sense of reference, whether cultural (The great escape with Steve McQueenbut also Animal Farm of George Orwell) or historical (the henhouse depicted as a concentration camp and the pie oven as a crematorium), Chicken Run is still today an emblematic animated marvel of Aardman productions, of complete technical, narrative and artistic mastery. The result was the studio's biggest theatrical success (nearly 3 million admissions in France, where the film was released during the Christmas period), which could not, however, be followed by a nomination for the Oscar, the ceremony not yet rewarding films that year at the time (the category would be created the following year). No matter, that won't stop us from diving back into the magic of Aardman productions, from 9:05 p.m.
The synopsis of the film: At Tweedy Poultry Farm, chickens that don't lay enough eggs to make breakfast know they risk ending up on the dinner menu. But the intrepid Ginger and her peers are determined to seize the first opportunity to take hold and escape this sinister fate. However, time is running out for them since Mrs. Tweedy, the greedy owner of the farm, decided that the residents of the barnyard would soon end up as raw materials in the manufacture of poultry pies. But a rooster from the sky could give them hope…
Trailer for Chicken Run :
Shaun the Sheep marks Aardman's return to the big leagues [critique]