Chicken Run/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Rocky a Jerkass, who lead the girls on false promises and turned their backs on them only to have a sudden attack of conscience that prompts him to return, or is he a sympathetic man (or rooster) who was put into this situation by a goal driven chicken who would stop at nothing to get what she wants, and gets treated like a Jerkass even though he technically, never lied in the first place.
  • Animation Age Ghetto: Chicken Run is a semi-mature film, but was billed as a children's film.
    • According to The Other Wiki, the producers attempted to avert this by dropping a character from the early scripts named Nobby (who was supposed to be Ginger's little brother, and thus the Kid Appeal Character) in order to avoid being excessively cute.
  • Award Snub: Despite critical acclaim, a determined campaign from Aardman and preference by a number of Academy voters, the movie failed to gain a Best Picture nomination. This would result in the creation of the Best Animated Feature category the next year.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Pretty much the whole soundtrack, although a few tracks stand out above the rest:
  • Designated Villain: Sure, the Tweedys aren't particularly pleasant people, but they're also just doing their job as chicken farmers. Particularly Mr. Tweedy, who wants to do a good job for his wife even against entirely valid concerns about what the chickens get up to.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Babs.
  • Fridge Logic: Naturally, an egg will only hatch a chick if the mother hen bred with a rooster. Which means that all the chicks we see at the end would be either all Ginger and Rocky's offspring, or the guy ... ensured everyone's eggs would give them one. Although it probably plays by the fictional rule that an egg always hatches if it doesn't end up as food.
  • Fridge Horror: What might have happened if the plane never got the Christmas lights hooked on, and Rocky and Ginger had nothing to pull themselves back onto the plane?
    • Wait a sec, wouldn't that door kill Mrs. Tweedy?!
      • Probably not, since she managed to survive the machine explosion.
    • What would have happened to Babs if the Tweedy's hadn't switched to pie production over egg farming?
  • Iron Woobie: Let's just say Ginger has to put up with a lot over the course of the film.
  • Memetic Mutation: "In the unlikey case of an emergency, stick your head between your knees and kiss your bum good-bye!"
  • Narm: "You are going to be a pie!"
    • Additionally, Ginger's Disney Death can lose its shock pretty quickly, especially when you notice that the top of her head is still slightly visible, making it glaringly obvious what really happened.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Mrs. Tweedy has been compared to Maleficent in terms of scariness, and for good reason. With her motivation being stereotypical greed, she could easily have become a comical Large Ham, but she...doesn't. Her lack of emotion as she carries out her plan is precisely what makes her so chilling. And then we have the climax, where she goes Ax Crazy and maniacally tries to slaughter our heroes, arguably For the Evulz at that point. To top it all off, think about the film in relation to World War Two; it shouldn't take long to realize that Mrs. Tweedy is an Expy of Hitler. Enjoy the movie, kids.
    • When Ginger and Rocky get trapped in the pie machine.
    • The offscreen death of one of the chicken's by axe in the beginning of the movie. You don't see anything but you hear the sound.
  • Tear Jerker: Rocky's reaction when Ginger is seemingly killed by Mrs Tweedy can be pretty heart tugging.
    • Dude, the guy is crying.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games: Averted. The game based on the movie is a pretty good steath game with exciting levels and funny mini-games.
  • Special Effect Failure: See the second entry under Narm above.
  • What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: See Never Trust a Trailer. The film was marketed as a kids' comedy but is actually quite mature and surprisingly dark.
    • Like all good fairy tales!