Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
AARDMAN + NETFLIX
Aardman Animations – founded in 1972 – was a low-budget dream project used to create small claymation animated segments for the BBC. Over the years, Aardman has gone on to realize this potential through several commercially and critically award-winning and highly beloved films. The most famous of which is, still to this day, Chicken Run, released in the year 2000. Fast-forward twenty years later and Aardman has taken the, unfortunately, unnecessary step of releasing a sequel. Sadly, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget could not be more underwhelming. Aardman’s latest release is an unbelievably safe approach, hampering the incredible production values and does nothing more than cause the audience to wish they had produced something new, fresh and different aside from possibly staining a classic.
Any negatives to do with the lazy character writing and cliché ridden plot aside, there is still some magnificent animation and direction being put on display here. The countless environments and character models needed to be created – or recreated after a massive fire many years ago – are done so with a level of care and attention frequently unseen in the film industry that echoes a wonderfully engaging sense of dedication. Quite frankly, everything placed in front of the audience on-screen has been sculpted with love, and this emphasis is obvious from the moment the film begins. Unfortunately, look any deeper and such a sentiment cannot be said for much else.
The script follows the previous incarnation clan of chickens on their way to rescue some of their own, from both a new threat and a wonderful surprise from the original. While that may sound delightful on paper, promotional material seemed to point towards that delight being true. The film is then further squandered, genuinely shockingly so, with uninspired voice acting (looking at you, Zachary Levi) and painfully unfunny humour. Twenty years and an increased budget could not save a film where a majority of the original cast was recast with intended "bigger names", some for good reason and others seemingly to flounder to a more contemporary viewership, yet those very "bigger names" never suffice to – at the very basic metric, are unable to – elevate the material in their own right to make the feature any funnier.
Aardman is a British industry titan that has been around for almost sixty years, and to see them still producing claymation at such a high level of quality is incredible to witness, not only avid fans of the technique but younger audiences on an educational degree with digital animation now the industry norm. Nevertheless, Aardman showcases no evolution nor a degree of intrigue within their premise and the quality of the scripts they are producing, resulting in the devastating notion that all of this hard work feels unjustly squandered. The irony is that the primarily intended desire to create a “legacy” sequel of sorts is most certainly what has killed this film and the potential franchise, leaving it on both a saddening and devastating release of being dead on arrival.