It’s undercooked
AARDMAN’S LATEST ANIMATION IS ENTERTAINING BUT
AARDMAN’S animators spent four years hatching this sequel. The Wallace & Gromit creators have now made nine decent films but it’s a shame they didn’t spend more time polishing this script.
The entertaining but laugh-free followup begins with a recap of the events that helped make 2000’s Chicken Run the most successful stop-motion animation of all time.
Following the chickens’ prison break from murderous Mrs Tweedy’s farm, we find our heroes enjoying life on their human-free island. Then, American rooster Rocky (Zachary Levi replacing Mel Gibson, for obvious reasons) and plucky Brit chick Ginger (Thandiwe Newton replacing Julia Sawalha for more mysterious ones) get some cracking news. Their first-born Molly (Bella Ramsey) has finally come out of her shell.
But the adventurous hatchling becomes fascinated by the vans driving up a distant road emblazoned with the Fun-Land Farm logo and featuring a picture of a happy hen holding her thumbs aloft like a feathered Paul McCartney.
Who can blame her? The clucker is sitting in a paper bucket. And which young chicken doesn’t dream of having her own bucket?
After Molly follows one of the vans into Fun-Land, she discovers it’s another prison, only this time it’s churning out bite-sized fast food. So, in a neat plot reversion from the first film, Rocky, Ginger and company go full Tom Cruise to break in and bust Molly out.
“It’s an impossible mission,” says a rat ally, in one of the film’s disappointingly clunky gags.
We’re used to comedies using all their best lines in the trailer. Dawn Of The Nugget is the first Aardman film to feature its funniest line in the title.