CHICKEN RUN

Yes — and bring everyone. Chicken Run is a brilliantly crafted comedy, full of clever dialogue and exquisite, painstaking claymation that rewards adults as much as kids, the way the best Toy Story films do. Underneath the jokes sits a genuinely moral story: prayer, honesty, and loyalty run through it, and its hero eventually faces a real choice between self-preservation and sacrifice for others.

There's little here to worry a parent — some slapstick and cartoon violence against the villains, a couple of menacing dogs, and a British slang word that means nothing objectionable to American ears. That's it.

It's also a movie worth rooting for on principle: a non-Hollywood, non-Disney production made with real craft and real heart. Take the family. This is exactly the kind of movie worth supporting.

A flock of hens, led by the plucky Ginger, is determined to escape their farm before the ax falls. Attempt after attempt fails — until a self-proclaimed "flying rooster" named Rocky drops into their coop and promises to teach them to fly to freedom. The hens are dazzled. But the farmers, Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy, are building something far worse than the ax: a machine with a simple, chilling purpose. "Chickens go in, pies come out."

Four stars means this is about as good as this kind of film gets, and the source backs it up scene for scene. The claymation is called exquisite, laborious, and beautiful — the kind of craft that rewards a close look. The dialogue is clever throughout, and the film is described as drawing smartly on classic escape movies for its structure and gags. Its comparison point is Toy Story: a family comedy that's arguably more enjoyable for adults than kids, not less.

Chicken Run is, at heart, a moral film, and it wears that morality plainly. The story is built on prayer, honesty, and loyalty among the hens, and it takes seriously the difference between a leader who tells the truth and one who doesn't. Rocky spends most of the film letting the flock believe a lie about his own ability to save them — and the film doesn't treat that lightly. It's framed as a real moral failure, one he has to reckon with before the story lets him become genuinely heroic.

That reckoning is the film's best idea: freedom isn't found in someone else's rescue alone, and true courage looks like staying to help rather than escaping alone. The hens' longing to be free of the coop, and Rocky's eventual choice to risk himself for others rather than fly off to easy safety, echoes something Scripture prizes far above cleverness or survival: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).

Chicken Run earns its four stars honestly — clever, gorgeous, funny, and morally serious in all the right ways. There's nothing here to make a parent hesitate, and plenty to make the whole family laugh and think together. Our answer is simple: worth the trip. Gather the family, pop the corn, and let this one make its case for good, honest storytelling — animated or otherwise.