Mel Gibson was one of the biggest stars on the planet through the 80s and 90s, helping to turn Lethal Weapon into a massive franchise, turning period pieces into blockbusters with Braveheart and The Patriot, and forever changing how we think about the post-apocalypse with Mad Max. But the Aussie’s strangest role came about in 2000, when he voiced a flying Rooster named Rocky in Chicken Run, a stop-motion parody of The Great Escape from the team behind Wallace and Gromit. Now available on Netflix, twenty-five years later, it’s still the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time.
Chicken Run applies the very British sense of humor of Wallace and Gromit to a chicken farm that resembles a World War II POW camp. Peter Lord and Nick Park, the geniuses behind Aardman’s stop-motion hits, manage to turn the absurd setting into a matter of life and death when the owners, the Tweedys, decide it’s more profitable to turn chickens into pies than to try and sell their eggs. Enter Rocky the flying rooster, voiced by Mel Gibson, who the hens believe can teach them how to fly and lead them to freedom.
The problem, of course, is that chickens, like turkeys, can’t fly, even if you drop them off a helicopter hovering over a mall in downtown Cincinnati. We all know Rocky is lying through his teeth to the hens, but thanks to Gibson’s fantastic performance and the sharp writing of Lord and Park, you can’t help but be charmed by him. Chicken Run is, surprisingly, one of his best performances, and another reason why it’s a shame his career took a nosedive a decade later.
It’s not just the excellent writing that makes Chicken Run fun; it’s a visually stunning film. Stop motion animation is a time-consuming art form that demands incredible levels of patience, with every minute of the film requiring a full week of work in Aardman’s massive studio, housing 30 sets and a team of 80 dedicated animators. A 30-minute short was released alongside the film on DVD, highlighting the extensive process and going into detail on different types of chicken beaks, animating feathers, and the precision required to make all 30 sets appear to be cohesive, no matter their scale.
All of the hard work paid off with a final escape that pushes stop-motion to the very limits of what’s possible, and at the box office. Chicken Run cost $45 million to make, and earned $225 million, making it a huge hit for Aardman and that success continued when it became a best-selling DVD. It’s a shame that there was never a sequel. There’s a movie called Chicken Run 2: Dawn of the Nugget available on Netflix, but it should never, ever be watched.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Chicken Run is still sitting at a 97 percent fresh rating, and with its re-emergence on Netflix, a whole new generation can appreciate the subtle British humor that turns from puns to slapstick at the drop of an egg. Mel Gibson has starred in films since Chicken Run, including Signs and Daddy’s Home 2, but none can match the weirdness of hearing him voice an American rooster teaching chickens to fly.
Chicken Run is now on Netflix.
