Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget- Don’t Believe that Heaven Is Finger Licking Good

Having escaped from the farm, Ginger and Rocky welcome a new little adventurer into their lives. Back on the mainland, the whole of chicken-kind faces a terrible new threat.

Review:

Chickens are naturally funny, almost cartoonish in the way they cluck, attempt to fly and ambulate. So Chicken Run: The Dawn of the Nugget, shouldn’t have needed 23 years to hatch a sequel, but various snafus and business ventures and breakups, other assorted cracked and broken eggs have prevented a return to the chicken farm. Nugget comes fresh with a new voice cast (Mel Gibson and Julia Sawahla– whose voice can be heard from cobbled together archive recordings in the flashback sequences- being replaced with Zachary Levi and Thandiwe Newton as the poultic leads) but the same crack writing team of Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell cracking open a suitable sequel plot.

Here, since humans love McNuggeting and eating chickens, they are the villains. Mrs Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) and her axe have returned for some more serious slicing dicing and fricassee-ing. The plot involves rescuing the main chickens, Rocky’s and Ginger’s chickadee, Molly (Bella Ramsey) from the clutches of a mass chicken manufacturing slaughter house that tenderizes flocks with false paradise notions designed not to let them die with tense muscles and screams (that produce tough and unflavored meat). The caper has strong nods to

Mission: Impossible,” sprinkled with some references to Bond villains, “The Truman Show,” “The Stepford Wives” and probably some other movies I missed. It doesn’t mess with success, repeating the better beats and characters from the original- also the same style punning and contraptions.

The mild social commentary against factory farming, and eating animals in general, doesn’t get in the way of the fun. The theme of overprotective parents who need to let up and allow their children some fun and freedom echoes those of many Pixar films from Finding Nemo to Elemental. But this is really a chicken movie, about not leaving anyone behind. It’s lessons are gentle, comic, heartfelt and endearing. These are chickens you want to hang out with and call friends.