What a charming little animated whimsy “Chicken for Linda!” is.

It’s an adorable cartoon for French students of all ages, by turns sweetly sentimental and seriously slapshticky, a tale of a child who craves a dish her father used to make her, and her widowed mother’s frantic efforts to deliver it in the middle of a national strike, mass protests and freely-acknowledged incompetence when it comes to killing and butchering a live chicken.

Because that’s what this meal boils down to.

“Vive la France” and all that. But work stoppage/police action de damned. There’ll be hell to pay because “Linda veut du poulet!”

Co-writers/directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach show us a child who, as a toddler, saw her father die over dinner, whose mother Paulette still grieves and who only loses her temper when Linda keeps “borrowing” her ring from her late husband.

Accusing the child of “stealing” that ring, and “lying” about it, Paulette (voiced by Clotilde Esme) is in a fury right up to the moment she realizes the fat cat Gazzo swallowed it, and threw it back up.

She used the French word for “dumbass” in lashing out at her kid. She slapped Linda when she parrots the French word for “dumbass” back to her mom. Whatever can she do to make it up to her little girl?

“Tell me!” she pleads, apologetically (in French with subtitles). “Anything!”

“Chicken with peppers,” little Linda chirps.

It’s raining. There is no school because of the work stoppage. No stores are open. A restaurant that appears to be serving has a waiter who comes up to customers with a covered dish, under which is a simple note.

“En greve!” On strike!

A monkey at the zoo wears the same slogan, which is plastered on placards and grafitti in the city. There is no “chicken” to be found.

Desperate Paulette leans again on her had-enough-of-this-nonsense older sister, but practical Astrid (voiced by Laetitia Dosch) is no help.

But that egg farm on the edge of town? Surely they have chickens to sell. “Not dead,” the teen in charge declares. “Not for sale,” he adds, going back to practice his guitar.

Paulette comically unleashes a coop and clumsily catches one. And that’s where the REAL trouble begins.

The cops get involved. The neighbors, too. Astrid gets yanked out of a yoga class she teaches over this. Hard to stay “zen” with all the things her kid sister is messing up. And even if Paulette isn’t arrested, how will she deal with a live chicken?

“Cut off its head? Suffocate it? WRING its neck?”

Linda, who doesn’t know what a “strike” is, but knows she’s got to have that chicken with peppers, is full of ideas.

The animation style here is outline-sketch limited but fluid and lively. A lot of the drawn moving figures are reduced to simple blobs of color, especially when seen from afar.

The filmmakers throw in generational jokes, as in “How old does someone have to be to have grown up on a farm and know know to kill a chicken?”

There’s a “Breaking Away” homage involving mother and daughter on the lam in a melon truck and a dogged cop on a bike chasing them as the driver enjoys Felix Mendelssohn’s “Italian Symphony.”

The story skips through charming and grating supporting characters, through a near-riot and kid-led protest over police efforts to grab the chicken, along with a couple of musical moments, and a production number finale.

“Chicken for Linda!” is just edgy enough for adults to enjoy, but not so edgy as to alarm parents who want to watch this with their Pixar-aged children. Still, there is one question every adult must ask before unleashing “Linda,” her mom and that chicken on your little girl or little boy.

“How’s his or her French?”

Rating: unrated, mild profanity, avian peril

Cast: The voices of Mélinée Leclerc, Clotilde Hesme and
Laetitia Dosch

Credits: Scripted and directed by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach. A GKids release.

Running time: 1:16