Chicken Run : La Menace nuggets

After watching this movie during the day on Christmas Eve with my Mum, Dad and my brother Jordy for lunch here's my spoiler-free review of Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget! As usual, I'll be talking about my thoughts, my favourite moments & comparing the other Aardman shorts and my conclusion/rating! After the 2000s original Chicken Run, we finally have a sequel all of it was claymation but there was one that wasn't! A lot of cast members from the original did not return some were recast but the voice cast that did come back were Jane Horrocks as Babs, Imelda Staunton as Bunty, Lynn Ferguson as Mac & a surprise return was Miranda Richardson as Mrs Tweedy! I waited this long to write my review so I can be honest about it earlier in 2023 I wrote a spoiler-free review for Star Wars: Visions Vol. II Episode IV: I Am Your Mother which I enjoyed very much! Comparing this to Star Wars, Early Man, Shaun the Sheep and Wallace & Gromit (which is finally getting a new film after we lost Peter Sallis back in 2017 6 years ago) it's not as good as the previous instalment! Overall I'm sure kids will enjoy this and I look forward to seeing what Aardman does next! That's why I gave this a 6/10! Go check out the other mini-movies while you wait for more & I'm certain that you, your kids and the whole family will be entertained by them! ;-)

This sequel to 'Chicken Run' arrives after 23 years, but don't worry, being animated the returning cast haven't aged a bit! Although the story picks up where the original left off, this is an entirely new adventure and you don't really have to see the first film to follow the story, although it is highly recommended. The opening to 'Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget' recaps the events of the first film in a nutshell.

The chickens are living happily on an island away from humans, and Ginger and Rocky starts a family. Their daughter is Molly. No sooner has she become a teenager than she becomes curious about the world and what lies on the other side of the lake. When trucks arrive and start clearing the forest, the chickens devise a plan to shelter themselves from human vision, but Molly wants to explore...and so she does.

She befriends a chicken named Frizzle, and together the head to Fun-Land Farms where they believe chickens to live happy lives, according to an advert they saw. Off course the farms are not what it seems, and they soon get into trouble.

It's up to Ginger, Rocky and some of their friends to save them. Last time they broke out of a chicken farm; this time they're breaking in. A familiar antagonist from the first film returns, as well, but I won't spoil it for you.

I enjoyed the stop-motion animation, the characters, their adventures, and the humour. This is a delightful film young and old can enjoy. The film also illustrates how the younger generation are not always appreciative of what their parents went through to ensure their survival, and I don't think youngsters watching this will fully understand. These are lessons a mature audience will relate to.

As much as I enjoyed 'Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget', I enjoyed 'Chicken Run' more, because it was simpler and funnier.

Looks like the creators didn't learn anything from the failure of Early Man (2018). A successful family animation needs to engage folks of any and all ages - the first Chicken Run did to a good extent. This one didn't. Ditto Early Man.

Audiences want to see relatable settings, characters with soul, plots that are realistically challenging (not pointlessly ridiculous). So we end up with a colourful bland bright happy island commune ... overdone, unrelatable and boring. Then we get a silly super high tech robots and gadgets filled chicken farm/factory - huh? And football matches in prehistoric Early Man? Huh?

From the short documentary on 'the making of' its immediately clear the creators and team spent a massive 99% effort on the puppeting, the sets, the lighting, the movements, the look of things - which is fine, except, where's the effort on the story, the characters, the soul of the whole thing??

The director even laughed at how fun it was to give Ms Tweedy a glam look - but hello mister - did you ask yourself what the viewers want out of a once iconic scary evil character like her? A glam up look? Really?

It does seem all the people involved in this - many very competent in their area of specialty - was more focused on putting out their best on producing their area of specialty than making an animated movie that truly relates to the audience.

For instance so much technical deal and effort was made of Tweedy walking down glass steps - if the story and plotting was better it wouldn't have mattered if she was walking down milk carton cutouts with average lighting and a less smooth gait.

Do please spend more thought and effort on plotting and characters and audience impact, and less on the visual razzle dazzle.

The film was amusing enough (lots of slapstick humour) and I enjoyed the fun details in the animations, e.g. A hot air balloon disguised as a cloud, and the factory "eye register" including a night-shift worker with very bloodshot eyes..

That being said, the storyline felt unoriginal and became flat halfway through; it was too obvious what was going to happen. Chat GPT could have written it - and given many industries' overreliance on AI, it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case.

I also have to agree with some other reviewers that the personality of main characters was watered down, especially Rocky. The original Rocky's bragging bravado was a big driving force and source of parody in the first film. The sequel's endless slapstick humour and flat characters didn't do enough for me.

There are some prequels or sequels that no one asked for, but end up being happy that they happened anyway.

This sadly isn't one one of them.

I was already upset by the fact that many of the core voice actors were being replaced. Mel Gibson I could understand for obvious reasons, but the excuse for Julie Sawalha's exclusion was not acceptable. I do believe the real reason was because Sawalha is no longer famous, while Thandi (or Thandiwe) Newton, her replacement, is a big name in the industry. This is a growing trend in modern animation where famous actors are favoured to voice cartoon characters rather than actual voice actors.

At one point Ginger fearfully says "that voice!" before the reveal of the return of Mrs Tweedy. It would have been extremely awkward if Miranda Richardson was no longer voicing the villain.

The story itself is a little too similar to the first Chicken Run and the animation looks too shiny and CGIed, despite most of it being clay-animation. The stakes were not really as high, and the characters were not as fleshed out as they were in the first film.

My favourite character is still Fowler, as he was still hilarious. And unlike the new voices for the other main characters, David Bradley does a great job here.

The humour in the first film was intelligent and witty. But despite most of the film still being proudly British (even including a chicken character with a Scouse accent) , the magic and the passion found in the first film has dampened down quite a lot here.

Kids will no doubt enjoy it. But after 23 years, I wasn't all that impressed.