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.
Review of The Natural History of the Chicken
