Karey Kirkpatrick

The chickens in Chicken Run (2000) take getting out of their Yorkshire coop seriously, and Kirkpatrick’s screenplay lets them. The prisoner-of-war escape structure supplies the obstacles, but Ginger’s determination makes the story work without any knowledge of the films being borrowed. Directors Peter Lord and Nick Park give the birds concerns of their own, rather than treating them as vehicles for references. Some of the escape-film jokes stretch thin, but this is the Kirkpatrick script we recommend most warmly.

Literary adaptations have occupied much of his writing career, from James and the Giant Peach (1996) through The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) to Charlotte’s Web (2006). His move into directing came with Over the Hedge (2006), alongside Tim Johnson. Here, the suburban animals provide a way of looking at human consumption without delivering a lecture.

We laughed at the early consumption montage because the animals made our own appetites look foolish. Kirkpatrick shares the screenplay with David Hoselton, Lorne Cameron and Len Blum, so its successes and shortcomings cannot sensibly be assigned to one desk. There is enough wit and animal slapstick to keep the film enjoyable, even when the plot becomes predictable. But the reminders about family are less persuasive than the jokes about human excess.

Smallfoot (2018) brought directing, screenwriting and songs written with Wayne Kirkpatrick; the return to Aardman came with Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023). Directed by Sam Fell, with a screenplay by Kirkpatrick, Rachel Tunnard and John O’Farrell, the sequel reverses the escape plot into a break-in. It is tidy, decent family entertainment, but rarely as odd or as sharp as the original. Reversing the plot is a workable reason for a sequel, though we would have preferred more of the first film’s peculiar humour. Start with Chicken Run, where we care enough about the birds to forgive the occasional overworked joke.