It’s hard sometimes to remember the massive hype surrounding the original Chicken Run back in 2000. It was the first feature-length animated film from stop-motion company Aardman Studios, which had won viewers’ hearts with the multiple-Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit shorts. Everybody loved Aardman — critics, ordinary moviegoers, film snobs, kids — because its animation was distinctive, its stories charming, its visual wit dazzling. Directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park, Chicken Run was a huge hit for Dreamworks, the studio that partnered with Aardman to make it.
Over the years, Aardman has continued to make visually interesting and charming shows and films, including its masterful first Shaun the Sheep picture in 2015. But it never quite hit the financial highs of that first Chicken Run again, which might explain why we now have a sequel to it. That earlier film might at times feel like ancient history — and it pretty much is, at least to the kids to whom this sequel is targeted — but its shadow looms large over Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
The new film, directed by Sam Fell, helpfully opens with a brief recounting of the events of the previous movie, which was basically a spoof of The Great Escape set on an egg farm in Yorkshire. The previous movie’s two fowl protagonists, bloviating American cannonball artist rooster Rocky Rhodes (voiced by Mel Gibson in the first, Zachary Levi in the sequel) and headstrong Ginger (Julia Sawalha then, Thandiwe Newton now) are married and living in an idyllic bird sanctuary with their fellow chickens, far from those scary, poultry-farming humans. Their young daughter, Molly (Bella Ramsey), however, is restless and wants to see the world beyond the confines of their enclave. When they spy a patch of forest across the water being razed and a bunch of other chickens being carted off in a van advertising Fun-Land Farms, the ever-vigilant Ginger fears the worst. Molly, on the other hand, flies the coop and tries to join the transported chickens on what she suspects will be a fun new adventure where they get to ride around in buckets.
Dawn of the Nugget unfolds as a series of action set pieces that showcase Aardman’s fondness for twisted physics, wild inventions, and broad slapstick, as Rocky, Ginger, and their fellow chickens from the first film (as well as Nick and Fetcher, the two crafty rats who can seemingly procure and/or build anything) set off to rescue young Molly. There’s even some dystopian sci-fi thrown in, as our heroes eventually wind up inside a massive, futuristic poultry fortress where chickens are outfitted with neck braces that turn them into dumb, happy, playful zombies. (Because, of course, happy chickens taste a lot better than scared chickens. It’s nice to see that the good folks at Aardman have retained their fondness for occasional bits of dark, grisly humor.)
The film is at its best when it indulges in the visual comedy and daffy engineering that made these movies so popular, from fire-extinguisher-propelled dollies speeding down winding country roads, to security guards handcuffed to firecrackers, to an enormous corn silo turned into a giant popcorn machine through a clever harnessing of the sun. The handmade Claymation also gives everything a queasy tactility that enhances the effect; everything (and everybody) looks like it could all turn into indistinct goo if things don’t go just right.
The movie is less successful, however, when it tries to insert some pro forma “heart” into its story. In the dialogue-free Shaun the Sheep films, for example, action inspires emotion — characters are defined and expanded through movements, gestures, and expressions. That was true even of Farmageddon, which couldn’t hold a candle to the first Shaun the Sheep picture but still provided enough of the pleasures of that series to make it a worthwhile watch.
A similar diminishing of returns occurs with Dawn of the Nugget, though the new film’s ambitions are also smaller. The first Chicken Run had a wider range of expressive physicality; its characters were more diverse in style, and they interacted with one another more. (Maybe this also had to do with the fact that it had a different voice cast; Mel Gibson was a perfect match for the fast-talking, grandiose Rocky, whose character seems a lot less dimensional this time around.) The new movie does introduce the intriguing Frizzle (voiced by Josie Sedgwick-Davies), a daffy and fun-loving chick with a thick Yorkshire accent that Molly befriends in her pursuit of adventure, which suggests that the filmmakers themselves knew they had to vary this cast of characters a bit.
So, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is baggier than the original, not as funny, and it drags in parts and is on the whole less memorable. But dammit, it’s still fun, and that’s ultimately what matters. The first movie had to kick off an entire industrial enterprise, and so couldn’t really afford to fail. The sequel, made for Netflix, is there largely to pass the time, to keep the kids entertained and the adults mostly contented, all of which it basically achieves. We once expected great things from the revolutionary Aardman and perhaps still do. What Aardman expects from itself, that’s another matter.
