Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

The film was amusing enough (lots of slapstick humour) and I enjoyed the fun details in the animations, e.g. A hot air balloon disguised as a cloud, and the factory "eye register" including a night-shift worker with very bloodshot eyes..

That being said, the storyline felt unoriginal and became flat halfway through; it was too obvious what was going to happen. Chat GPT could have written it - and given many industries' overreliance on AI, it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case.

I also have to agree with some other reviewers that the personality of main characters was watered down, especially Rocky. The original Rocky's bragging bravado was a big driving force and source of parody in the first film. The sequel's endless slapstick humour and flat characters didn't do enough for me.

Looks like the creators didn't learn anything from the failure of Early Man (2018). A successful family animation needs to engage folks of any and all ages - the first Chicken Run did to a good extent. This one didn't. Ditto Early Man.

Audiences want to see relatable settings, characters with soul, plots that are realistically challenging (not pointlessly ridiculous). So we end up with a colourful bland bright happy island commune ... overdone, unrelatable and boring. Then we get a silly super high tech robots and gadgets filled chicken farm/factory - huh? And football matches in prehistoric Early Man? Huh?

From the short documentary on 'the making of' its immediately clear the creators and team spent a massive 99% effort on the puppeting, the sets, the lighting, the movements, the look of things - which is fine, except, where's the effort on the story, the characters, the soul of the whole thing??

The director even laughed at how fun it was to give Ms Tweedy a glam look - but hello mister - did you ask yourself what the viewers want out of a once iconic scary evil character like her? A glam up look? Really?

It does seem all the people involved in this - many very competent in their area of specialty - was more focused on putting out their best on producing their area of specialty than making an animated movie that truly relates to the audience.

For instance so much technical deal and effort was made of Tweedy walking down glass steps - if the story and plotting was better it wouldn't have mattered if she was walking down milk carton cutouts with average lighting and a less smooth gait.

Do please spend more thought and effort on plotting and characters and audience impact, and less on the visual razzle dazzle.

Aardman Animations, personally, is a hit or miss for me as in the past, they have created some great works like Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and so forth. But at the same time, they have made some pretty mediocre or pretty bad works too. "Chicken Run" is one of my favorite stop-motion movies as I really like the characters, the animation, and the narrative. With this sequel coming out after many years, it was entertaining but it was a bit underwhelming.

Throughout, the stop-motion animation, character models, and colors are amazing as Aardman continues to provide great clay animation. Aardman always provides some great animation and the models, colors, sound designs, and the movements are all excellent. We get to see the same characters from the previous movie and it was fun to see them communicate, move around and observe their actions throughout. The voice performances from the cast members were solid as they provided some good voice works, although a few voice performances weren't great. The soundtrack is pretty good and there are some decent humor moments that I chuckled at.

With the narrative continuing from the previous movie, the narrative explores some new concepts and territories within the setting and characters and there are some aspects that were interesting but some not so much. Certain new concepts that were explored I felt weren't strong enough and at times, it really feels like a rehash of the first movie. On the characters, there are new characters that are introduced but unfortunately, none of the new characters weren't really interesting since they felt a bit dull and kind of annoying at times. Because this is a new cast, I personally felt while the original characters are still fun, the chemistry and energy of what made them fun from the first movie felt a bit lacking. The soundtrack is okay and there are some solid dialogue moments while being a bit clunky.

Despite my gripes, I still was interested to see where the movie goes and for what it is, it's a decent sequel. Overall, it is entertaining and it's nice to see the characters again, but I wish it could have been better.

The stop motion is always on point. Impressive, when you think about how much time goes into it.

If you work really hard, you can probably scrape together some respect for the production, but that might be the only feeling you can evoke. The voice acting isn't great, and not just because the original actors are missing. There's a strange disconnect between the animation and the acting, it feels insincere and forced.

The story is nothing new, and it should have been. It should have broke new ground just as the original did. It really feels like they put no effort into creating an original plot and just clung to the coat tales of the first film. Seems like a bad choice.

I want to write something positive about it but I don't really know what that could be. I guess Bella Ramsey was good casting. I'm only giving it 5 stars because I appreciate the time it takes to make stop motion.

Diminishing returns are in full effect with Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, a harmless film that's filled with good messages about parenting even if they've all been done before. It's only sporadically funny but it gets away with it thanks to its stop motion claymation which is increasingly rare to see and just a gift to have.

Recasting Mel Gibson makes sense and replacing Julia Sawalha really doesn't. That being said Thandiwe Newton and Zachary Levi do a good job of making the swap as seamless as possible. Bella Ramsey's Molly is a welcome addition with the ideal amount of childlike wonder and yearning for more in life.

Sam Fell's direction gets so much mileage out of the claymation. This form of animation requires so much care and patience which makes everything better. The only slight issue is how clean everything is. Generally it's just really vibrant and clearly very polished which feels like it comes at the cost of losing the original's style.