Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget’ on Netflix, an Acceptably Amusing Sequel That Lacks the Usual Aardman Special Sauce

An eternity passed between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, but it wasn’t as long as we waited for Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (now on Netflix). Twenty-three years have passed since the debut of Chicken Run, the then-first-ever feature-length film from Aardman Animations, home of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. Twenty-three! So many things in the world have changed since then – including the swapping of Mel Gibson for the less problematic Zachary Levi in a lead Chicken voice role – yet Aardman’s droll, pun-happy, very extremely British comedic sensibilities remain a constant, as evidenced by this deeply silly movie. We should expect nothing less, frankly.

CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: RECAP: You may or may not recall how a nasty farmer once wanted to murder all the chickens on her farm, presumably for food, and how said chickens successfully staged a revolt and escaped. They were led by Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Levi), who have since settled on an idyllic island with their fellow chickens, who appear to be running a berry and corn farm. Why berries? I guess they like jam? What’s the economy like in this chicken commune? Prosperous? It looks prosperous, with its thatched-roof homes and cooperative division of labor. Anyway. We reacquaint with Ginger and Rocky, who are proud parents of an egg. An egg that, in classic cartoon fashion, runs away once its legs pop out. Eventually fully emerging from the shell is Molly (Bella Ramsey), who’s beloved by all the chickens. Their old friend Babs (Jane Horrocks) even knits her a bicycle. Knits! A bicycle!

Then, a montage. Molly grows into a sweet, spunky and curious kid – so curious, she wonders what life off the island might be like. Hoping to curb her wandering spirit and therefore keep her safe, Ginger and Rocky don’t tell her about their more adventurous past. And there’s certainly something to protect her from, as they’ve spotted on the mainland some strange trucks advertising someplace called Funland Farms, whose logo is a smiling chicken in a bucket, which might as well be the grim chicken reaper. And of course, Molly sneaks away, because she’s her mother’s child. The feather doesn’t fall far from the chicken butt, you know.

On the other side of the water, Molly meets another wandering spirit, Frizzle (Josie Sedgwick-Davies), whose flock was scooped up by the people in those super fun-looking trucks. Molly is naive and Frizzle believes there could be nothing more fun than a go-round in a bucket, so they allow themselves to be captured and taken to Funland Farm, which looks like a Bond-villain HQ on the outside, and on the inside, is a cheery chicken utopia with nothing to do but hang out and play. Well, it seems that way at first, until it becomes obvious that the other chickens are rather dim. Empty of skull. Brainwashed, you might say. Chickens a la Werner Herzog, who sees in the eyes of the fowl “a bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity.” But it’s not like they can help it, right? I mean, read the title of this movie. These chickens are about to become… dawns. It’s dawns, right? Or not? Ah, nevermind. I wasn’t going to spoil it anyway. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: No movie before now bridged the gap between The Truman Show and Fantastic Mr. Fox, but this one did.

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: It’s not giving away too much by saying Miranda Richardson returns as the nasty, nasty Malicia Tweedy, right? Nah. 

Memorable Dialogue: Ginger leads the flock into action:

Ginger: OK everyone – it’s go time!

Babs: It’s all right. I went before we left.

Sex and Skin: None. Nobody gets plucked here.

Our Take: So are we all going to be converted to veganism by the end of Dawn of the Nugget? Well, the movie’s good, but not that good. Honestly, the Chicken Runs are a firm, somewhat distant third behind Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep in the Aardman oeuvre. But the first run for Chicken Run was a big box office hit in 2000, so this sequel was inevitable. OK, maybe not inevitable, which implies greater urgency than a 23-year gap between movies. But Nugget was an eventuality at least, and it delivers as expected, but only as expected, not more than expected. 

Aardman’s brand of hardcore whimsy remains intact, and should inspire plenty of smirks. Visually, the film’s attention to detail is intricate and lovely – all the better to set up a bevy of sight gags, which are the primary fuel for the movie’s comedy engine. Even when the characters don’t quite come alive like they should, and the plot chugs along without any real surprises, you can rest assured that every Aardman product puts visuals first and character-jabber second. In fact, the jabber holds Dawn of the Nugget back a little bit; think how inspired the Shaun the Sheep stuff is, without a single line of decipherable dialogue. When chickens stop to talk about crap and stuff, chickens cease with the inspired slapstick and goofy antics. 

So the movie doesn’t always click comedically like it should, and there’s an overall sense that it could and should be better. It builds to a big action-heavy third-act set piece that delivers an acceptable payoff, but by then, the movie seems a bit gassed, having delivered its best jokes in the first two acts (at about the midpoint, Ginger leads a crack cluck team to infiltrate Funland and rescue Molly in the film’s most dynamic sequence). As for the animal-empathy subtext? Sure, it’s there, in a tossed-off kind of way. But this is mostly nitpicking. Despite not quite living up to its pedigree, Nugget will be a perfectly amusing diversion for most any audience. With the exception of Werner Herzog, of course.

Our Call: Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget isn’t as delightful as it should be. But it’s still fun, and absolutely fun enough for family movie night. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.