The Natural History of the Chicken (2000)

Sadly Over-hyped

Pretty Good

Good movie but grossly overrated

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This documentary's title and description imply that the movie will at some point locate the chicken within multiple contexts: historical, biological, social, etc. In fact, it merely locates a handful of not particularly interesting people (in this context), each of whom has a different personal relationship to a chicken or a chicken story. My nine-year old, who loves documentaries, kept asking when we'd learn something about actual chickens. Point well taken. True, the movie shows us eggs and takes a brief look into a factory where eggs are laid and collected. By brief, I mean a minute of watching chickens eat food, and a later shot of a conveyor belt transporting eggs. There is no enlargement on why we see this at all, For example, no discussion of the shift from small independent farming to mass production. Or of chicken evolution. Or, really, of any research-based insight. The focus is really on people who can squawk like chickens, a guy whose grandfather had a headless chicken, a woman who dotes on her rooster, and so on. If you're feeling extremely passively voyeuristic and have a fever and so need about an hour's worth of barely related and not very compelling stories about people whose main claim to fame is having a charming little chicken story, then this is the movie for you. This state of mind might also work well with the general sloppiness or perhaps intentional disinterest in stitching a relevant narrative out of footage that seemed more random and aimless as the movie went on.

I wouldn't have expected such a strong, consistent and enticing show from a chicken documentary, just like most people here. Watching the tender tales of chicken love was a fun and, to some degree, beautiful experience. The connections that can be made between human beings and animal usually have this loving and innocent quality to them that eludes most relationships in life. To find these chicken stories and portray them in such a skillful way is surely a feat worth praising.Yet, while it is consistent with the world-view of this film, I resent the fact that industrially bred chicken - and their owners - are deemed to be inferior in passion and devotion. While the comments (or lack thereof) in presenting the larger chicken business do not go into blatantly manipulative affirmations against chicken products, they still spell out a very negative view of what is outlined to be exploitative behavior. I'm sure you can find interesting tales of care from farmers who happen to own large chicken housing establishments, because it's not easy at all to look after tens of thousands of chickens and ensure they live a healthy life. And while there is certainly a level of detachment involved in "the industrial chicken", it's necessity for basic and essential food products cannot be denied and should not be denigrated. To my mind, restricting the film to what it does best - establish the beauty of life - would've done it more good and would've conferred it a higher consistency and integrity, in a purely structural sense.Beyond this though, which is truly only a slight part of this documentary, I think it's worth a recommendation for its ability to encapsulate the specialness in this absolutely unique relationship people have with animals.

This was an amazing film. We watched it in Bio whilst coloring in diagrams of photosynthesis (my chloroplasts were pink!), and I was expecting something boring on eggs and whatnot.Instead, it introduced us to a "plucky farmer" who saved her frozen chicken with mouth-to-beak. There's a woman with a chicken named Cotton who swims with it, gives it daily baths, and gives it a diaper. There's moral discourse on killing chickens for food. There's a guy, my new hero, who can perfectly imitate various rooster noises. He's rather good at the mating dances, too.I am in love with this film.

A pal with a sense of humour sent me a tape of this documentary, without a label to indicate the contents. Well, I popped the tape in the player and sat there, totally entranced by the sights and sounds! Brilliantly photographed and directed, full of good humour, captivating people and chooks, it literally kept me sitting on the edge of my seat until the credits appeared. Without a doubt, this is the best animal documentary I've seen in the past 20 years. Seemingly chooks are more difficult to train than any other member of the animal kingdom. The feathered actors in this documentary seemed far more intelligent than many human actors I've seen in the current crop of big name movies.Great fun for all the family.