Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget review – sequel soars above the original – BBC.com

The Aardman animation sequel combines quirky British humour with emotional depth to create a sooner, zanier caper with extra bold motion set items, extra white-knuckle jeopardy, and extra robotic geese.

It has been 23 years since Hen Run, Aardman’s first full-length characteristic movie, launched the world at massive to the Bristolians’ claymation figures and batty British humour – and it is nonetheless the studio’s largest box-office hit. That statistic may clarify why Aardman has now made a Hen Run sequel, however it might additionally clarify why they waited so lengthy. Confronted with the problem of residing as much as such a beloved international smash, you’ll be able to hardly blame them for taking flight. Fortunately, the chance they’ve lastly taken has paid off. Hen Run: Daybreak of the Nugget does not simply attain the requirements of its high-flying predecessor, however it soars above them.

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Written by Karey Kirkpatrick, John O’Farrell, and Rachel Tunnard, the story begins instantly after the top of the unique Hen Run – an phantasm that may be a lot simpler to drag off if you’re animating clay fashions than it’s when you are taking pictures flesh-and-blood actors. Ginger the hen and Rocky the rooster have escaped from the Tweedys’ farm, and now dwell with the remainder of their feathered mates on an idyllic island, within the sort of rustic village that might simply be inhabited by hobbits or Ewoks.

Ginger and Rocky then have a chick, Molly (voiced by Bella Ramsey), who quickly grows into an adolescent – or regardless of the equal of an adolescent is in poultry years. She may lead a carefree, free-range life, however she has inherited her dad’s wanderlust and her mum’s rebellious defiance, so she is aggravated that they will not let her depart the island. To their horror, Ginger and Rocky realise that Molly sees them as jailers, simply as they noticed Mr and Mrs Tweedy as jailers – so even in its opening minutes, the sequel has extra emotional depth than the entire of the primary Hen Run.

When Molly spots a lorry with “Enjoyable-Land Farms” painted enticingly on the facet, she runs away from residence, and discovers too late that a spot that was marketed as a paradise is definitely a monstrous space-age fortress with a marked resemblance to a Bond villain’s base. Inside, the captive hens are fitted with will-sapping digital collars that flip them into compliant zombies, as mindlessly content material to stroll to their doom as the ladies in The Stepford Wives. Ginger and Rocky plan a rescue mission, and Ginger utters a line that was presumably meant as a lot for the trailer as for the movie: “Final time we broke out of a hen farm. This time we’re breaking in.”

The one off-putting factor about that is that final time, Ginger and Rocky have been voiced by Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson, whereas this time, Thandiwe Newton and Zachary Levi have taken over the roles. “I’ve formally been plucked, stuffed and roasted,” the actress complained of the recasting on social media. Director Sam Fell (Flushed Away) responded by saying he noticed the movie “as a reboot, moderately than a sequel”, explaining that “the characters are evolving… and Ginger’s developed on this movie. It’s a brand new chapter.”

Nicely, truthful sufficient, however Newton does not sound any higher as Ginger than Sawalha did. And, by the way, Levi’s voice sounds wimpy in comparison with Gibson’s gravelly tones. In the meantime, the 2 spivvy rats are performed by new actors (Romesh Ranganathan, Daniel Mays), whereas a number of of the hens (Jane Horrocks, Imelda Staunton, Lynn Ferguson) have the identical voices as they did in 2000. It is all a bit distracting.

In any other case, Daybreak of the Nugget is buoyant household leisure, with much more jokes and extra silliness than its predecessor. The unique Hen Run was a reasonably easy and barely gloomy pastiche of The Nice Escape and different prisoner-of-war dramas: other than the pie-making contraption and the wood airplane, it lacked the great English eccentricity (or egg-centricity) of Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit movies.

The sequel is impressed by Mission: Not possible, James Bond and varied different spy thrillers and heist films, and this shift in genres has allowed for a sooner, zanier caper with a brighter color palette, extra bold motion set items, extra creative designs, extra white-knuckle jeopardy, and extra robotic geese. The trick is that the filmmakers stability the shiny surfaces and high-tech gadgets of a futuristic Nineteen Sixties science-fiction journey with sufficient old school, analogue parts to make sure that Daybreak of the Nugget is unmistakably the work of Aardman.

There’s additionally a slyly subversive edge to proceedings. The company Enjoyable-Land Farms compound is extra sinister than the Tweedys’ crumbling farm was, and, for all its wackiness, the movie consists of frequent reminders of the truth of recent industrialised meat processing. Most viewers must be cock-a-hoop, though shareholders of sure fast-food franchises may want that plans for a Hen Run sequel had by no means been hatched.

★★★★☆

Hen Run: Daybreak of the Nugget is streaming on Netflix from 15 December.

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