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Twenty-three years after *Chicken Run*, Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi) are raising a daughter, Molly (Bella Ramsey), on an island where no human can find them. Molly is bored of safety and wants to see the mainland. What she finds there is a farm where lorries arrive under a picture of a beaming chicken and the birds inside all seem delighted to be there. Ginger, Rocky and the old flock, with Bunty (Imelda Staunton), Mac (Lynn Ferguson), Fowler (David Bradley) and Babs (Jane Horrocks), must get her out, which means getting in. Sam Fell directs Aardman’s stop-motion sequel, from a screenplay by Rachel Tunnard, Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell. It runs 101 minutes and carries a PG.
In a sentenceThe chickens are all smiling, which is the most frightening thing Aardman has ever built
Aardman’s sequel swaps the prison camp for a heist and keeps the clay. It is neat, handsome and mostly pleasant, and only once, in a room full of grinning hens, does it find something as sharp as the original.
Twenty-three years after Chicken Run, the hens have a sequel, and it runs the old plot the other way. Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi) are raising a daughter, Molly (Bella Ramsey), on an island where nobody can find them, and Molly wants off. What she finds is a farm where the chickens go in smiling, and the film turns into a heist: this time they are breaking in. Sam Fell directs, from a screenplay by Rachel Tunnard, Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, and the result is decent, tidy family entertainment that only now and then remembers how odd and sharp the first film was.
The clay still works. Darren Dubicki’s island is a soft green mound of huts and washing lines, thumbprints just visible; the farm is its opposite, clean curves and pastel pink with a grinning chicken over the gate and something grey and industrial behind it. Charles Copping lights the island in low, warm, late-afternoon sun and the farm in flat, bright colour from nowhere in particular, which is right for the place and wearing over the long stretch we spend there. A chicken here can lie with its whole body, and Bunty (Imelda Staunton) can be furious with a single lowered eyelid.
The break-in is the best of it. Nick (Romesh Ranganathan) and Fetcher (Daniel Mays), the rats, supply the kit; Mac (Lynn Ferguson) does the engineering; Fowler (David Bradley) does the briefing, at length; Babs (Jane Horrocks) knits. Stephen Perkins cuts it as a proper caper, moving between the team inside and the team outside so that every problem has a clock on it, and Harry Gregson-Williams gives it muted brass and a ticking rhythm one nudge away from the spy series everyone will be thinking of.
What got at us was the farm itself. Molly arrives to find rows of hens wearing fixed smiles, waddling contentedly towards a door, and the film holds on that picture longer than a family film usually dares. We were properly unsettled, more than at anything in the first film, whose horror was a pie machine; this one’s is a room full of happy faces. Dr Fry (Nick Mohammed), the scientist responsible, and Reginald Smith (Peter Serafinowicz), who runs the place, are funny in a mild, sitcom way, and the film cannot hold that chill for long.
The gags are the trouble: they arrive at a steady, moderate rate, few landing hard. We laughed out loud twice, both times at the rats. Fowler’s war stories, the first film’s most reliable running joke, are back, shorter and less funny. Rocky has less to do as a father, and Levi plays him broad and amiable where he was once a cheerful fraud; Newton’s Ginger is warmer, steadier and less prickly. The recasting of the two leads is competent and still a loss, and anyone who grew up with the first film will feel it in the opening minutes.
Ramsey plays Molly as a teenager: bored of the island, sure of herself, wrong about most things. Her friendship with Frizzle (Josie Sedgwick-Davies), a hen who wants to go to the farm because the lorries look like fun, is the one relationship the film invents rather than inherits, and it is thin. They meet, they go, and the plot needs them in different rooms. The argument with her mother that sends Molly away is the film’s spine, resolved the usual way.
The first Chicken Run (2000), directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park, had one frightening idea, a farm that was a prison camp, and told every joke inside it. This one has a heist, a factory, a coming-of-age story and a marriage, and runs them side by side in 101 minutes, so none gets enough room. Mrs Tweedy returns, and we will say no more about how.
It is a PG, and rightly; nothing here will trouble a small child except the smiling. Watch it with one, at home, where the flat colours matter less and the rats get the laughs they are owed. If you loved the first film you will find this pleasant. Pleasant is not what you loved it for.
Most critics like Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget without loving it. The praise clusters almost entirely on Aardman’s stop-motion craft: the expressive chickens, the detailed sets and the heist set-pieces built on a Mission: Impossible template are singled out again and again, and several reviews find the action bolder in scope than the original’s. The reservations cluster just as clearly. Many find the story repeats the first film’s beats, the jokes land less often, and the whole thing lacks the original’s spark, with the voice recasts a recurring complaint. The spread is fairly wide. The Telegraph calls it brilliant and uproarious and The AV Club reckons it more fun than the first film, while The Guardian finds it undercooked and short of fresh ideas. Slant Magazine is the notable dissenter on craft, seeing a flat look and bland design where nearly everyone else sees a case for the handmade approach.
The critic calls it a brilliant, uproarious sequel that moves the story on with thrilling infiltration missions and mind-control schemes, drawing on the golden age of British comics and spy capers.
Read the full review →A rollicking animated followup that's even more fun than the original, using a Mission: Impossible template with strong teamwork and gadgets. The emotional hook is stronger in the finale grudge match with Mrs. Tweedy.
Read the full review →The film delivers a delightful return to Aardman’s stop-motion style with an inventive Mission: Impossible-style plot. The critic praises the seamless animation, cheeky humor and detailed craftsmanship.
Read the full review →The sequel largely repeats the beats and characters of the original film. The critic highlights the expressive stop-motion chickens as the source of its comic appeal.
Read the full review →Might not fully capture the magic of the original but is still fun, with visual comedy and daffy engineering as highlights. It is baggier, not as funny, and drags in parts but achieves its goal of entertaining kids and adults.
Read the full review →The film mostly fails to make a convincing case for Aardman’s old-school artisanal approach, with bland design and a flat look. It plods along as a functional joke vehicle fueled mostly by fond memories of the original.
Read the full review →
2000 · The original: one prison camp, one pie machine, and every joke sharper than here.
1963 · The film the first *Chicken Run* was quoting; tunnels, roll calls and a motorbike.
2005 · Aardman at full stretch, with a dog whose eyebrows do more than most scripts.
2009 · Wes Anderson’s stop-motion heist, drier and stranger, with farmers worth stealing from.
1995 · A farmyard film that takes the abattoir seriously and earns its happy ending.