Chicken People

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.

Synopsis

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.

Release

Critical response

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. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 81 out of 100 based on 4 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
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." 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." 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, it also abounds in moments of ineffably charming comic relief".
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."