In the early '90s, I was at an animation film festival and saw Creature Comforts for the first time. It had won an Oscar for best animation short feature in 1990, and I was hooked. The concept was so like Gary Larson's The Far Side, with the zoo animals discussing their lives, and the lion talking about freedom. That claymation was directed by Nick Park.

Park is back again (along with co-director Peter Lord) for a full-length animated feature called Chicken Run, done in a similar claymation style as Creature Comforts. Except this time it's the chickens looking for freedom, led by a plucky freedom-fighter named Ginger.

Chicken Run starts out as a spoof on prisoner movies (such as Papillon or The Great Escape) as the camera pans over a concentration-camp-style collection of chicken coops surrounded by barbed wire. Lurking in the shadows, to escape the detection of the dimwitted Mr. Tweedy and his vicious rottweilers, is our Steve McQueen-style escapee, Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha, Absolutely Fabulous). Initially, she attempts to burrow under the fence and lead the other chickens to freedom.

She will later organize the chicken troops, draw out elaborate escape plans, hold planning meetings, and relentlessly try various means of escaping. These escapes all fail, and Ginger is repeatedly thrown into the coal hole to mark off her days in solitary confinement.

No matter; Ginger continues to plan an escape for all her friends, because she is not content eating chicken feed. She also knows that they are doomed to slavery and will be killed if they don't produce their quota of eggs. We see Mrs. Tweedy carry out this execution sentence on one poor hen that goes 5 days without laying any eggs.

Ginger wins our heart by continuing to have hopes for freedom, and she sees a huge chance for this. Rocky, the flying Rooster, crash-lands in the yard. Rocky is different from the other chickens. He is an American (voiced by Mel Gibson); the other chickens are all British. This sets up a lot of humorous situations—many involving inside Mel Gibson jokes. Watch the hens' reactions when Rocky muses about where he's going to bed down for the night.

The plot thickens: The greedy Mrs. Tweedy decides to kill all the chickens who lay the not-so-lucrative eggs. She wants to go for the big bucks by converting the barn into a chicken-pot-pie manufacturing plant. You can probably guess where this will all lead.

I found more human expression and empathy for the characters in Chicken Run than I did for Russell Crowe and his family in The Gladiator, but that's not saying a whole lot. It does seem bizarre to have a greater connection to clay figures than to flesh-and-blood humans, but that's the power that the directors and screenwriters display in Chicken Run. Just watch the subtleties expressed in Ginger's eyes and explain to me why the Academy didn't nominate her for Best Actress to give Julia Roberts more competition. Must be some kind of prejudice against chickens, clay figures, or comedy!

These chickens exhibit the same quirky behavior that we see in humans, and do so with much fun. We expect a lot of humor in what is essentially a cartoon, yet there's a darkness to the scenery that I found a bit surprising (pleasantly so). The darkness gives a little more urgency to the chickens' plight, since we know they can literally lose their heads and be served for supper.

Chicken Run is filled with numerous sight gags, and often there are so many things happening on the screen that you'll find plenty of humorous visual pleasures. I found myself smiling and laughing throughout the 84-minute running time.

I'll see Chicken Run again, and will continue to watch it on DVD. There is a surprising depth to it, and it's actually a life-affirming film that will make you feel better afterwards. It definitely ranks among the top 10 films of 2000.

Despite the puns and subtle humor designed for adults, children will also relate. Over half the audience I sat with was children, and they spontaneously cheered and applauded the finale. Be sure to sit all the way through the credits for one last Mel Gibson in-joke reference (with the two entrepreneurial rats). You might even discover whether the chicken or the egg came first.