Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

Available in selected cinemas and on Netflix

It’s been 23 years since the original Chicken Run delighted audiences and, although the reason for that absence is chiefly down to the toll the first film took on its creators, it’s questionable whether a sequel was ever warranted. That’s at least on the evidence of this expensive Netflix reboot, which is certainly ambitious enough from a production perspective but, narratively speaking, leaves a lot to be desired.

Although the writer of the original film, Karey Kirkpatrick, is on board, the rural, working-class charm of that picture is mostly lacking from this glitzier successor, with many of the previous voice cast (including star Julia Sawalha) swapped out for younger actors that, through no fault of their own, bring little new to proceedings. Dawn of the Nugget also cheekily leans into the vegetarian/vegan allegory that was apparent in the preceding film, although the extent to which it does so may alienate the more carnivorous elements of its audience (put simply, if you don’t want your children to ask what’s in their McNuggets, maybe pass on this).

While its title is ingenious and premise mostly sound, Dawn of the Nugget feels creatively redundant for the most part, with the majority of its laughs and set pieces being the result of uninspired rehashes of lines or moments from the previous film. Granted, as a bit of festive family fun it works well enough, but Aardman can and have done much better.