What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that although this movie is rated G, it may be too scary or hard to follow for kids under 6 or 7. A minor character is killed off-screen, and characters are in peril throughout the movie.

Families can talk about why it was hard for Rocky to tell the truth -- and even to understand what telling the truth meant (as when he said, "I didn't lie to them, dollface. I just omitted certain truths"). Families can also discuss Ginger's perseverance in the face of steep odds, her refusal to escape without her friends, and the importance of leadership and teamwork. Why does Ginger have a dream of freedom that some of the other chickens can't even imagine? What does it mean to say that "the fences aren't just around the farm -- they're up here on your head"?

Common Sense Media Review
CHICKEN RUN has arrived, to the joy and relief of the many fans of Nick Park's Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit short films. In his studio's first feature-length movie, a brave chicken plots an escape from a small Yorkshire chicken farm.

The stern and angry Mrs. Tweedy (voiced by Miranda Richardson) and her brow-beaten (or should that be hen-pecked?) husband have bullied their hens into producing eggs, but now they've set up a fierce-looking machine that turns chickens into chicken pies. Ginger (Julia Sawalha) is a smart, brave, loyal chicken who won't leave unless she can take the others with her. When an American circus rooster named Rocky ( Mel Gibson) arrives, Ginger gets him to agree to teach the chickens to fly over the fence, so they can find a place where they can live in freedom.

Park is a master at creating a world that is enchantingly believable. The farm seems to be set in the 1950s, and every detail, down to the last nail in the last board on the hen house wall, looks exactly as it should. Though his painstaking process produces only a few seconds of film footage each day, every frame is filled with vivid personalities who seem to be moving in real time, each creating an instantly recognizable character. One look at Mrs. Tweedy's formidable Wellington boots marching into the hen yard for inspection, and we know everything about her. The chickens are highly individual, completely believable, and wildly funny, whether doing Tae-Bo-like exercises for increasing wing power or a celebratory Lindy hop. But I admit that my favorite characters are two forager/thief rats who are so completely charming that it's impossible to imagine anyone objecting to their stealing.

The movie also features Park's special talents for creating deliciously malevolent machines and split-second action sequences. Ginger and Rocky fall into the chicken pie machine for a scene that combines Rube Goldberg complexity of gears and operations with the breath-catching near misses of Indiana Jones.

Three cheers for producer DreamWorks, who let Park be Park and didn't focus-group him into making something more linear and accessible. What that means, though, is that the movie does not have some of what both adults and kids expect in a G-rated movie. This isn't a musical in which the heroine sits down 15 minutes into the story to sing about her dreams or adorable sidekicks provide comic relief.

This also isn't a script with jokes that children will necessarily understand. Indeed, given that most of the parents of today's school-age children were born 20 years after the 1950s, there are several jokes even parents may not understand, like a pointed reference to the delay in the U.S. entry into World War II and a couple of witty tributes to the classic movie The Great Escape . The movie has a decidedly British point of view, with a wonderful range of accents that will be much more meaningful (and understandable) to English children than they are to Americans. Park is like Chuck Jones, who, when asked whether he made cartoons for adults or children, replied, "I make them for myself and my friends." But, as with Bugs Bunny, kids will enjoy the world created by this movie and will rejoice in the chickens' adventures.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-rabbit and Flushed Away.