Peter Lord takes the worries of animated chickens seriously, and we tend to follow. As director and producer, he favours expressive characters and carefully timed visual jokes, though the feature-length plots sometimes need tightening.
Fi1m perspective
Ginger wants out of the coop in Chicken Run (2000), and Peter Lord and Nick Park give that wish the attention an escape film would give its human prisoners. The chickens have their own concerns, so recognising the references is optional. We were surprised by how much we wanted Ginger to escape, because her determination is allowed to matter more than the next joke. Lord is worth following for that willingness to take an absurd character seriously.
The route from the early Morph work to Chicken Run, Aardman’s first feature, is a useful way to understand his strengths. The studio Lord founded with David Sproxton built a style around handmade movement and character-led comedy. In Chicken Run, Karey Kirkpatrick’s screenplay gives that approach a prisoner-of-war structure, while Lord and Park find personality in the birds’ movements. Some of the prison-camp business repeats itself, and the pace occasionally slackens. Even in those stretches, the birds remain distinct enough to hold our attention.
His producer credit on Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) needs a different sort of judgement: this is Nick Park and Steve Box’s film, not evidence that Lord devised every good gag. Still, its precise gestures and affectionate monster comedy are good reasons to value the work he supports. Gromit’s silent exasperation is a pleasure even when the plot strains to fill a feature. It is the kind of comedy that needs us to notice a small response, and trusts us to do so.
Flushed Away (2006), which he produced, tested those character habits in computer animation; The Pirates In an Adventure with Scientists (2012) found him directing again. The technique matters because Lord favours visible evidence of the physical work, including fingerprints and deliberately clunky timing. The handmade work has a particular appeal, but it does not excuse a slack passage or make a borrowed genre funny by itself. Start with Chicken Run: its escape-film jokes occasionally run thin, but the birds give us ample reason to stay.
Biography
Peter Lord is a British animator, director and producer. He co-founded Aardman Animations with David Sproxton in 1972.
Lord directed Chicken Run (2000) with Nick Park and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012). He has served as producer or executive producer on Aardman productions including Flushed Away (2006) and several Wallace & Gromit films.
Born in Bristol in 1953, Lord attended the University of York. He received a CBE and was later knighted.
