Chicken Run 2: Dawn of the Nugget
Dawn of the Nugget is an imperfect sequel to Chicken Run, but with more to say than Aardman’s much-loved original
Chicken Run is the best-selling stop-motion feature film of all time, so it’s only natural that news of its sequel was met with much egg-citement (sorry). A lot has changed in the runup to Dawn of the Nugget’s release. All of Aardman’s original maquettes burned in a tragic fire in 2005, a year before Mel Gibson showed that he, like Rocky, is a prize cock.
Less has changed for the chickens. We pick up where the first left off, on ‘Wakanda for chickens’, as the director Sam Fell has described it. Rocky (now voiced by Zachary Levi) and Ginger (now Thandiwe Newton – Google the controversy around Julia Sawalha’s recasting) are parents to precocious daughter Molly (Bella Ramsey), whose perfect upbringing has garnered in her just one desire: to leave.
When she goes AWOL and ends up in a highly-guarded facility run by a character whose return is genuinely chilling, the film begins to feel more like the classic Chicken Run we know and love, doused in an air of peril missing from the beginning. So begins the rescue mission. Where Chicken Run was a straight homage to The Great Escape, ...Nugget is less focused on sending up one text, referencing everything from Bond to Spinal Tap. The humour is classic Aardman, its strongest new asset being Nick Mohammed’s Dr. Fry.
It’s imperfect, but ...Nugget has arguably more to say than its predecessor; about parenthood, where our food comes from, and grass-is-greener thinking. It never quite soars, but at least it clears the fence.
Released in cinemas 8 Dec by Netflix, streaming from 15 Dec; certificate PG