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07/11/00- Updated 02:29 AM ET

 

Film's playfulness is sure to crack you up

By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY

'Chicken Run'

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marroon.JPG (955 bytes) 'Chicken Run'

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marroon.JPG (955 bytes) The birds and the buzz
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It's better to have pluck than to be plucked. And they who flock together succeed together.

There's a bucket full of life's lessons in the cracking-good Chicken Run (3.5 stars out of four), which boasts the most delicious collection of desperately funny Brits since The Full Monty - and this cast is barely clothed from the get-go.

Run is an animated comic-adventure fable that's as rare as hen's teeth, one that aspires to a sublimely adult level, not sinking to juvenile muck. Except the hens that populate the painstakingly clever stop-motion clay universe of Aardman Animations (those Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit shorts) have teeth. Not lips exactly, but trembly Chiclet -filled grins that go with their perpetually startled eyes.

Poultry has never been so stuffed with personality.

Yes, there are wonderfully eggs-crutiating puns. But there's also well-drawn dramatic conflict. The premise is perhaps the best joke. At Tweedy's Farm, the '50s-era coop yard is like a grim POW camp complete with barbed wire, solitary confinement (actually, a dingy garbage bin) and snappish guard dogs.

Nudge-nudge references are made to Stalag 17 (the hens huddle for planning sessions in Hut 17) and The Great Escape, and the music marches to a taut martial beat.

But instead of Steve McQueen leading fellow inmates to freedom, there's sweet, selfless Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha , the straight-arrow daughter on TV's Absolutely Fabulous), dedicated to hatching a scheme that will allow her and her feathered friends to flee to a better existence.

And what a swell sisterhood they are, including bird-brained Babs (Jane Horrocks of Little Voice), Scottish egghead Mac (Lynn Ferguson ) and know-it-all Bunty (Imelda Staunton). Holding up the male ranks is crotchety old Fowler (Benjamin Whitrow ), a veteran of the RAF who gripes that Yanks aren't trustworthy: "Always showing up late for every war." Integrating the species mix is a none-too-bright pair of scavenging cockney rats (Timothy Spall and Phil Daniels).

Ginger is at wits' end when a possible savior literally drops out of the sky. She wastes no time persuading cocky Rocky (Mel Gibson, doing his best Chickenheart as a circus performer billed as the Flying Rooster) to teach her fellow fowl how to take wing, too. The brash American digs "English chicks," and they dig him back, but it's clear by the way he and Ginger butt beaks that love is a peck away.

The humor contains a meaty dark side that will make kids think twice before ordering McNuggets again. Greedy Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson), who lords over her henpecked husband, keeps a laying tally. Those who don't make their yolk quota are invited to Sunday dinner - as dinner. However, there is always a whiff of playfulness to take the edge off. In Babe, Chicken's closest companion in barnyard whimsy, the duck cries, "Christmas is murder." Here, Babs nervously knits a finely crafted noose when matters grow dire.

Some of the most hysterical scenes are the ensemble pieces, such as when the roly-poly cluckers engage in group calisthenics (like a gang of half-deflated beach balls doing Tae-Bo). But the main course that gives Aardman's artists a real workout is the inventively nightmarish ride through Mrs. Tweedy's chicken pot pie machine.

A little slapstick, a little action, rich characters and a whopping serving of wit. All baked to near-perfection. (G; opens today in select cities, wide on Friday)



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