Chicken Run 2 review: One cluck too many

Ginger, Rocky, and the Chicken Run gang are back — except they are nearly all voiced by completely different people which almost entirely changes their personalities, but don’t worry about that! Otherwise, they are exactly the same!

The 2000 action-animation film is a nostalgic sweet spot for many a millennial. Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson bravely led the voice-over charge in the name of taking back chickens’ freedom from perhaps the most fearsome plasticine villain of them all, Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson). As makes complete logical sense, the chickens fashion a fully-working plane out of one of the coops and fly off into a happy ever after.

Chicken Run 2 – actually titled Chicken Run: The Dawn of the Nugget – picks up almost exactly where the first film leaves off, although it seems as if an unspecified amount of time has passed simultaneously. The so-called “Wakanda for chickens” is the sort of cartoon paradise that could have easily been made into a satisfying YouTube clip to tide their aging fans over, but Netflix has instead decided to stretch things out into a fully-fledged feature.

It’s possibly important to remember that our cast are merely chickens, as talented as they are. Surely they can’t be expected to save a sinking ship from its on-the-nose and trite dialogue, barely-there plot, and the flimsy stand-in for Mr. Tweedy? Try as they might, their legs give out along the way – and that’s before viewers consider the change in cast.

The IP that didn’t need a sequel

Chicken Run 2 is weirdly a film that has been surrounded by drama from the get-go. When the project was announced back in 2020, lead actress Julia Sawalha simultaneously found out that she had been dropped as the voice of Ginger because she was deemed to be “too old,” despite proving her voice sounded exactly the same. Sadly, this has set a precedent of what’s to come, distorting the chicken gang to a point where grown-up fans no longer recognize their 2000s charm. While Mel Gibson’s recasting makes more sense, our other key figures – except Babs and Mrs. Tweedy – all find themselves slightly altered in a way that is too jarring to look past.

Our new cast is also left fighting something larger that isn’t working in the first place. In Dawn of the Nugget, the chickens are breaking back into Mrs. Tweedy’s new empire, where she forces hens to be happy in order to make their meat tastier. Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi) come armed with a new daughter Molly (Bella Ramsay), who gets stuck in the factory after running away from home. Whereas Chicken Run was a model on The Great Escape, its sequel feels more akin to the 26th reboot of Mission: Impossible once Tom Cruise has left the franchise altogether.

At its core, this new installment of Chicken Run feels largely devoid of what made it special in the first place. Instead of crafting something that stemmed from the beauty of its original worldbuilding, the sequel seems like the brainchild of streaming platform executives who have remembered a long-forgotten IP that, once upon a time, was popular. For no reason other than that, chickens are being sent into popcorn-grinding silos, ponds with laser-ridden ducks, and sucked into vacuums that lead to a playground of no delight. Can they not just enjoy their well-earned time off?

Tweedy is as terrifying as ever

Chicken Run 2 also feels a little like an excuse to bring some core characters back – which in this case, is a delight. The star of the show is once again the cruelly callous Mrs. Tweedy, who seemingly fell to her death in the original film after falling from a moving hen-plane. Just like the Terminator, she bounces back time and time again, racking up a potential 3 chances of death in the sequel that she merrily skips over in order just to be mildly inconvenienced. At the same time, her dramatic return has all the flair of a telenovela cliffhanger, paraded into glorious view in such a way a fearsome villain deserves to.

Her surrounding cast is almost unworthy of being in her presence. New husband Dr. Fry is not so much an evil counterpart, but a fly that desperately needs swatting only to survive in a tiny space regardless. The security crew is lifeless and unable to deliver the jokes – which is mostly the case for the team of victorious chickens too. All but one are subjected to the metaphorical creative chop, with Babs retaining her original voice actor and her naive dignity. In her innocence, she’s the sole bearer of any humor, quite literally picking up where she left off 23 years before.

It feels like a harsh time to be an animated chicken, and much of the obvious criticism has merit. At the same time, viewers can’t help but happily sit through the 97 minutes of bird-based chaos, which is still a far cry from being something that’s totally unpalatable. After all, this is Aardman animation – and these guys know how to do comfort-watching.

Chicken Run 2 review score: 2/5

2 in name and 2 in nature – Chicken Run: The Dawn of the Nugget doesn’t quite have enough steam to successfully fly the coop this time around.

Netflix is the ideal home for something so far removed from genuine creativity, making it the ideal flick to watch hungover on a Sunday or with children who desperately need entertainment. Sometimes – which is code for a lot of times – the original just can’t be matched.

Chicken Run 2 will be released on Netflix on December 15, 2023. In the meantime, you can check out our other TV and movie hubs below:

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