After 23 long years, everyone’s favorite chickens are back! 2000’s Chicken Run marked the feature film debut of Aardman Animation, a British studio specializing in stop-motion animation. The film, about a group of chickens working to escape a farm, received widespread critical acclaim, earned nearly $250 million, and effectively put Aardman on the map—outside the UK, where they’ve been well known since the 1970s. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the chickens have returned for a brand new mission—and a brand new film, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, which debuted at the London Film Festival.
After the events of the first movie, the chickens, led by Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi), are enjoying their new paradise away from human intervention—a place director Sam Fell called “Wakanda for chickens.” This glorious fowl haven has everything this egg-laying cohort could ever want or need, but Rocky and Ginger’s daughter Molly (Bella Ramsey) has an undeniable sense of adventure that she inherited from her mother.
Molly longs to explore off the island, but Ginger is determined to keep her close and protected. One night, Molly sneaks out and finds a truck that is headed for Fun Land Farm, which promises a world of excitement the likes of which Molly has never seen. Ginger, Rocky, and the other chickens try to track her down, but it’s too late: The only chance of getting Molly back is to break into the very ironically named Fun Land Farm and save her before it's too late to save her from the not-so-fun slaughterhouse.
Chicken Run is arguably Aardman’s standout film—though the studio won its only Oscar for Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit, it is likely Chicken Run would have been the first had the animated feature category existed. It seems reasonable, then, that the studio would seek to recreate that success, especially since most of their other film efforts haven’t made as much of an impact as Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit.
But Dawn of the Nugget is so keen to replicate the success of Chicken Run that it’s basically the same movie. It does follow the sequel tradition of being bigger and bolder than its predecessor: It’s about 15 minutes longer, and the place the chickens break into is considerably more colossal and infinitely more complex than the humble trappings they escaped years ago. The film’s main shift is that instead of breaking out, they’re breaking in, but it turns out those two things feel incredibly similar.
Doing the same thing again isn’t inherently a bad thing, but Dawn of the Nugget feels like a paltry imitation of the original. While Chicken Run borrowed from prison breakout movies, it felt like a completely unique film. Dawn of the Nugget, on the other hand, feels more like a collection of heist movie references than something with its own distinct identity.
The biggest problem is that Dawn of the Nugget relies on a character dynamic that isn’t fully fleshed out. The main relationship is between Ginger and her daughter, but Molly is a two-dimensional character at best; we don’t get much of a sense of who she is beyond her wanderlust, which is something that pretty much the majority of animated protagonists already have. She feels more like an extension of her parents than her own character. There’s never much of a reason to care about Molly, which is a shame considering that the entire film is centered around saving her.
These also don’t feel quite like the characters you know and love from Chicken Run. A big part of that is that much of the voice cast has changed, with actors like Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson replaced in the lead roles of Ginger and Rocky. While Gibson’s change is pretty easy to explain, it’s baffling that Sawalha—who very much expected to be in the film—isn’t present. Sawalha claimed she was told she was “too old” and was recast.
It’s a big mistake: there’s a passion lacking in Newton’s performance (surprising given her voice acting brilliance in Big Mouth), and the character feels like an imitation of Sawalha’s rendition rather than a new spin on the character. Voice acting is an art in and of itself, but Dawn of the Nugget seems more interested in big names than finding the right fit for the characters.
While Dawn of the Nugget is often a disappointing endeavor, there’s still plenty to enjoy here. Save a dreadful joke regarding chicken goujons, there are a lot of fantastic gags that’ll have you laughing throughout, especially a snail desperate to escape a boring conversation, an eye-scanning bit, and a delightful corporate video presentation.
Visually, the film is wonderful and the sense of scale is fantastic—hats off to the animation team for creating such a fascinating, vibrant world inside of a chicken factory. There’s lots of thoughtful visual detail, and the characters look great, nailing the Aardman aesthetic that fans have come to love. And while some characters have lost their luster, Babs (Julia Horrocks), everyone’s favorite knitting chicken, manages to be even more delightful in the sequel.
There’s enough here to make for a joyful family viewing experience when the film releases on Netflix in December. Parents, however, will probably be checking their watches as the film meanders through too-familiar plot points—something they never would have done in the first Chicken Run movie.
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