Colorful characters and situations make up for noisy introduction.
“Chicken for Linda!” starts off in a bratty sense, as the yellow little girl Linda gets wrongfully accused of stealing and losing her orange mother Paulette’s wedding ring, when it was actually eaten and vomited by their purple cat. The mother feels so bad that when she asks her daughter what she wants, Linda tells Paulette she wants chicken with peppers like her dead red father used to make. Two problems: the mother doesn’t know how to cook, and stores are closed due to a general strike. But the girl is persistent enough to have her mother steal a chicken from a friend’s farm. Parts of these earlier scenes become a bit overwhelming, but there are other aspects of “Chicken for Linda!” that makes it a fun, little French animated movie.
For starters, the reasons why I said: “yellow little girl,” “orange mother,” “red father,” and “purple cat” is because everyone in the film is hand painted a different color. Paulette’s older sister Astrid is pink, the police, like the bumbling rookie Serge, are either light blue or aqua, and the truck driver Jean-Michel is indigo. And the chicken Paulette steals is red. Sometimes, they look like their colors are painted outside their lines, sometimes they’re inside, and sometimes, it looks small time. But it is delightful in a rainbow sense.
Another thing is the way the rest of the movie plays like a “Seinfeld” episode for kids, when one situation sets off a chain of reactions and goofy things come out of it. And there is a “Seinfeld” book for kids called: “Seinfeld: The Day of Nothing.” It is a cute book, and when my parents gave out Halloween candy, my dad said: “Don’t double dip.” Of course, at their age, they didn’t get it, but I watched the show since I was 16.
Back to “Chicken for Linda!.” The red chicken leads the girl and her mother on a wild goose (or chicken) chase throughout Paris. They come across one whimsical character after another, Linda’s friends try to help find a chicken in their own childlike innocence, and Astrid has to act like the older sister whose younger sibling annoys her.
It’s a short movie, running for 73 minutes, almost like how certain animated movies ran between the 30s and 90s. I just hope the prices at the art house theater lower, because I remember a woman being made that “Winnie the Pooh” was too short of a movie to be shown in theaters at full price. But I’m not going to complain about prices. I think that despite the introduction, the movie has a silly appeal that keeps you watching. Once you get to know these characters, you’ll understand their behaviors and confidence.
Husband and wife filmmakers Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach also make this film a musical with certain overtones that reminded me of the Sherman Brothers, and they don’t oversell the movie on that notion. I admire the low-key drawing style and the silliness that comes out of it, and even though this is a short movie, you’re still given some time to acknowledge why you should care about these characters, despite their intros.
And plus, the title “Linda veut du poulet!” translates to “Linda Wants Chicken!” So, that makes sense for the persistence here.