'Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget': Soggy Scrambled Eggs

There must be a science to making a quietly disappointing sequel. All the hard work and good intentions remain (especially if you’ve spent years manipulating little clay figurines), but everything feels more labored and less effective. Elements that change feel blatant, things that stay the same feel tired, and about thirty minutes in, you realize it’s not going to get miraculously better, and you now must start processing feeling forever a bit let down. Maybe you’ll internally practice the right vocal inflection for telling people afterward, “I think it was good?”

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget comes twenty-three years after Aardman released the original Chicken Run, when Netflix was but a fledgling DVD mailing service and Aardman had a lot to prove. Chicken Run was the British animation studio’s first feature after three Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit outings and a whole host of darker, weirder shorts and commercials.

Living in a utopian island commune that director Sam Fell has dubbed “Wakanda for chickens,” Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi) are trying to maintain idyllic bliss with the arrival of their chick Molly (Bella Ramsey), who has a taste for adventure beyond Chicken Island’s boundaries. The flock soon embarks on a mission to liberate chickens being turned into processed food in a retro-modern, Bond villain-esque fortress, proving once more that the only happy chicken is a free one.