Chicken Run: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

From AwardAnnals

Reviews

Amazon.com

With a film as wildly, intelligently entertaining as Chicken Run, the score needs to be something special just to keep pace. Not a problem, then, for John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams, a pair who have worked (together and separately) on other animated films (The Tigger Movie, Antz) and action films (Enemy of the State, Face/Off)--which has prepared them well for a film in which a gaggle of chickens re-enact The Great Escape. Powell and Gregson-Williams's score is perfectly suited to the action on screen: classic instrumentation and serious themes, but with the occasional nod and wink. This is a score that, like the film itself, takes itself just seriously enough. Never bombastic, the cues pay tribute to the music of classic war and action movies--there's a hint of The Dirty Dozen, a nod to Indiana Jones, even a Star Wars-esque bit toward the end. --Randy Silver

Related works

Chicken Run

Peter Lord, Nick Park

• 2001 Golden Globe-Musical/Comedy nominee
• 2001 Hugo-Video nominee
• 2001 Saturn-Fantasy nominee
• 2000 BAFTA-Children nominee
• Score: 24.51

There were a lot of disappointments in the 2000 summer movie season, but Chicken Run wasn’t one of them. Made by Aardman Animations, which produced the Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit shorts, this is a dazzling stop-motion animation film that is both deftly funny and surprisingly touching. The concept is simple: The Great Escape—with chickens. But directors Peter Lord and Nick Park take it much further than that (and remember: there’s a whole generation out there that has no idea who Steve McQueen is). Julia Sawalha voices Ginger, a plucky English…

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