It’s fine, really.

It’s been twenty three years since the original Chicken Run and I’m going to be honest; I have no recollection of what happened in that movie outside of a vague knowledge that it’s a bunch of chickens escaping a farm. Thankfully the movie starts off with a recap of the events from the first movie to remind us what happened, given 80% of the movie’s audience wasn’t alive when it came out and probably hasn’t seen it in that timeline. The other 80% are for the adults watching who need a recap.

Dawn of the Nugget is the fourth film by director Sam Fell, whose first movie Flushed Away ironically was what fried the business partnership between Dreamworks and Aardman (the production company behind the first Chicken Run) due to its high budget and performance at the box office. Fell’s last movie was ParaNorman which took the notoriety of being the first mainstream animated film with a gay character in it.

The film brings back Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell as writers from the first film, as well as Miranda Richardson as Mrs. Tweedy. Is Mrs. Tweedy a spoiler? I don’t think that’s a spoiler. She is in the trailer. Julia Sawalha does not reprise her role as Ginger because the studio said she doesn’t sound good anymore. That role is played by Thandiwe Newton who played the drop dead gorgeous Dame Vaako in Chronicles of Riddick. Mel Gibson doesn’t reprise his role as Rocky, because he insisted on a scene where Rocky tells Mrs. Tweedy he hopes she gets “clucked by a gang of Ayam Cemani.” Whatever that means. Rocky is played by Zachary Levi because of course he is.

David Bradley takes over aging rooster Fowler as Benjamin Whitrow died in 2017. Timothy Spall and Phil Daniels aren’t back as rats Nick and Fetcher for some reason I couldn’t imagine why, those roles are now played by Romesh Ranganathan and Daniel Mays respectively. Bella Ramsey plays Molly, the plucky young daughter of Ginger and Rocky. In fact I believe the only other voice actor to reprise her role is Jane Horrocks who plays the lovable Babs. Oh yeah, Peter Serafinowicz is here as well, most popular as the guy who did the English dub for Darth Maul in Phantom Menace.

But enough about that, let’s talk about the plot. The movie kicks off after the ending of Chicken Run. The chickens have run and found themselves an island paradise where they can be safe and sound. That is until the fire nation attacked. Nah I’m just kidding. A road gets paved near the island and humans start trafficking through. The humans in Chicken Run are violent, stupid, and parasitic, a reference to humans in real life. The road is being used to transport chicken trucks to presumably a chicken farm that presumably will butcher and sell those chickens as food. And Ginger’s idea?

Stay put. But her hand is forced when Molly sets out on adventure and inadvertently gets captured by the chicken people. It’s up to the chickens to once again run and save Molly and perhaps the other chickens.

Dawn of the Nugget is a charming-ass movie. We’ve hit a point where animation studios can replicate the style of claymation in digital form and do a pretty good job of it, but damnit if Aardman isn’t unmatched in showing off the real thing. The film is beautifully animated and full of the same charming, quick-witted humor you’d expect from the writers of the original movie. It’s like they stuck the creators in cryostasis for the last twenty years and woke them up just to make this sequel.

There’s none of the trappings of modernized sequels you might expect, or attempts to shove in modern day references that will date this film in about ten seconds. There’s a whole plot about the chicken company using mind control on the chickens but that could have been done back in 2002 if the sequel theoretically came out there. We don’t have to see that scene where Mrs. Tweedy talks about AI running the company or makes a comment about putting fried chicken on the blockchain. It’s nice to have people who care about their movie at the controls.

Now it’s time to complain. Dawn of the Nugget is like the A Dame To Kill For to Chicken Run’s Sin City; a sequel that came out way too late and doesn’t quite capture the magic of the original. Not that the voice actors don’t give it their best, but the film doesn’t have the stakes of the original. I remember very little from the original movie which I haven’t seen since about 2003. But you know what I do remember? The chicken getting its head cut off. Chicken Run was as close as you can get to a WWII prison camp escape movie as you could get while still being child-appropriate, and the stakes and tone in the film reflected it. The movie was inspired by The Great Escape after all.

A chicken does die in this movie, but it is wholly off screen and is immediately played off for humor. The stakes just don’t seem to be as bleak in this sequel. Also this whole movie could have been avoided if Ginger had just spoken to Molly like an equal and explained that the world outside the island was dangerous.

I hope there isn’t a third movie because while it was enjoyable, the second is really pushing it. Chicken Run is a story that has breadth and not a lot of depth, and considering the second movie is already pushing the limits of what you can do with the premise of relatively intelligent chickens not wanting to be eaten squaring off against the humans that want to eat them, it can only go steepy downhill from here.

But it’s a nice movie to watch on a Saturday afternoon.

Rating: B-