| Chicken People | |
| Director: | Nicole Lucas Haimes |
| Music: | Michael Hearst |
| Cinematography: | Martina Radwan |
| Editing: | Kevin Klauber, A.C.E. Sara Booth |
| Distributor: | CMT Samuel Goldwyn Films |
| Runtime: | 83 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
Chicken People is a 2016 documentary film about people who breed and raise chickens for exhibition. It is focused primarily on three subjects who compete in the Ohio National Poultry Show in Columbus, Ohio.
A number of reviewers compared it to the mockumentary Best in Show.[1]
After an overview of people who have a passion for raising poultry, the film focuses on three main characters — Brian Caraker, a musical theater performer from Branson, Missouri; Brian Knox, an engineer of high performance race engines from New Hampshire; and Shari McCollough, a homemaker from Crawfordsville, Indiana.
Chicken People has received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 100% based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 7.23/10.[2] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 81 out of 100 based on 4 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[3]
Writing for The New York Times, Helen T. Verongos stated that "these chicken people, with deep connections to their birds, make for a fun and at times astonishing film."[4] In a review for the Los Angeles Times, Katie Walsh wrote that "the film proves to be more than just a glimpse into a world that's easy to titter at. Haimes delves into the larger issues and psychological motivations that drive the kind of obsession that allows one to breed award-winning poultry."[5] Joe Leydon, in a review for Variety, called it an "illuminating and amusingly entertaining look at the thriving subculture of competitive poultry breeders", and wrote that the film "generates a fair amount of suspense, [... but] it also abounds in moments of ineffably charming comic relief".[6]
A review for The Village Voice criticized the filmmaker for not probing deep enough with some of the subjects and their "larger failure [...] in never finding much of a compelling reason for us to care about this subculture beyond surface geek-show intrigue."[7]