Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget review

CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET: 

A DELIGHTFUL ALBEIT FAMILIAR REUNION WITH GINGER AND ROCKY! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

NETFLIX

Ginger and Rocky in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

 

            Ginger, Rocky, and their friends are back in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, the latest stop-motion animated feature from Aardman and highly anticipated sequel to their groundbreaking 2000 hit, Chicken Run. While there have been plenty of other feature-length stop-motion films in the past like Tim Burton and Henry Selick’s collaborations, The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, the original Chicken Run was Aardman’s first venture into full-length movies and was unanimously praised by critics and audiences when it came out. 

            I was six-years-old when the first movie was released, and I absolutely loved it and even today as an adult, the film holds up extremely well. The fact that it was essentially a prison escape movie with chickens was ingenious and made for an engaging story, the characters are lovable, the animation is stunning, and the action scenes are exhilarating which led to me watching it many times growing up both in theaters and on home video. 

            Thanks to Chicken Run’s success, it helped pave the way for Aardman Animations to create other high-quality feature films such as Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, and both Shaun the Sheep movies as well as a couple CG animated features like Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas. The works of Aardman, Tim Burton/Henry Selick, Laika Animation, and last year’s Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio show just what stop-motion animation is capable of in an era where computer animation is the dominant form of animation in the world of cinema right now. 

            Which brings us to Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, released on Netflix 23 years after the first movie with a handful of the original voice actors returning and in the director’s chair this time is Sam Fell (Flushed Away, The Tale of Despereaux, ParaNorman). Unlike the first film, it does not feature Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson as the voices of Ginger and Rocky nor does DreamWorks Animation have any involvement in it since their contract with Aardmanexpired in the late-2000s. 

            I was a little uncertain of how a sequel to Chicken Run would play out as it was a very self-contained story, but I was also down to see the characters I grew up with again all these years later. After much anticipation I can say that Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is a good time to be had, but nothing spectacular like its predecessor. 

            After their successful escape from Tweedy’s Farm, Ginger (voiced by Thandiwe Newton-Mission: Impossible 2, Crash, Solo: A Star Wars Story replacing Julia Sawalha from the first film) and Rocky (voiced by Zachary Levi-Chuck, Tangled, Shazam! 1 and 2 replacing Mel Gibson) are enjoying their freedom amongst the other chickens and now have an adventurous daughter named Molly (voiced by Bella Ramsey-Game or Thrones, Judy, The Last of Us). However, the chickens’ freedom is interrupted when Molly suddenly wanders off and discover a new threat in the form of a chicken nugget factory run by none other than the chickens’ old owner, Mrs. Tweedy (voiced by Miranda Richardson-Damage, Sleepy Hollow, Belle) who has gone from making chicken pies to nuggets. 

            With the help of their friends, Bunty (voiced by Imelda Staunton-Vera Drake, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Pirates! Band of Misfits), Mac (voiced by Lynn Ferguson-No Angels), Fowler (voiced by David Bradley-Harry Potter franchise, Game of Thrones, Tales of Arcadia replacing Benjamin Whitrow), Babs (voiced by Jane Horrocks-The Witches, Corpse Bride, Arthur Christmas), and scavenger rats Nick (voiced by Romesh Ranganathan-Cinderella (2021) replacing Timothy Spall) and Fetcher (voiced by Daniel Mays-The Bank Job, Nanny McPhee Returns, The Adventures of Tintin replacing Phil Daniels), Ginger and Rocky embark on another impossible mission to break into the nugget factory, rescue their daughter, and foil Mrs. Tweedy’s plans again. 

            The film also features the voices of Nick Mohammad (The Martian, The Kid Who Would Be King, Ted Lasso) as Mrs. Tweedy’s current husband Dr. Fry and Peter Serafinowicz (Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, John Wick: Chapter 2, Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm) as Reginald Smith. 

            Overall, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget offers another fun, fast-paced animated adventure for the entire family even if it can’t quite recapture the same magic as the classic original. The first movie’s storyline was clever with it being like The Great Escape with chickens and had subtle themes of feminism, revolution, veganism, fascism, and Marxism woven into it, this one mostly gives what audiences would expect out of a Chicken Run sequel except instead of breaking out of a farm they’re breaking in. 

            What does differentiate this film from the original is that it’s more like Mission: Impossible with chickens and leans into surrealism and absurdity compared to the first film which was mostly grounded in reality. This one has laser-guided exploding ducks, gun-toting robot moles, and brainwashing collars which at times feel like a drastic diversion from the first movie’s logic. 

            With that said, the absurdity does lead to some great humor with probably the funniest bit in the movie being this gag involving an eye scanner. There’s also this rant Mrs. Tweedy goes on where she complains about husbands and chickens that was very funny and just the banter between the characters and Aardman’s signature visual humor often leads to good laughs here. 

            The new voices for Ginger and Rocky are fine with Newton and Levi giving decent vocal performances. Rocky’s personality this time around feels very different from the first film where he goes back to being the dim-witted “Lone Free Ranger” character as if he didn’t go through his story arc from the first movie which seemed jarring during my viewing. 

            Once again, the animation is top-notch and allows for the animators and set designers to get creative and weird in both the characters, environments, and situations. Like most stop-motion animated features you can see the blood, sweat, and tears that went into every frame of animation throughout the film and the filmmakers should be applauded for their hard work. 

            Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget isn’t perfect and feels like a step back from its 2000 predecessor, but it has enough bizarre humor, appealing animation, and heart to make it worth a viewing. It may not be a glorious chicken pie, but a tasty nugget of joy is good enough…ooh, too far!