Somehow or other, it is 23 years since Aardman Animations broke through to the multiplex with the agreeable Chicken Run. It is not an easy film to follow up. What do you do with a sequel to a pastiche of The Great Escape? This belated part two, made for Netflix, happens upon the same twist exploited by the 1979 big-screen take on Ronnie Barker’s Porridge. “Last time we broke out of a chicken farm. Well, this time we’re breaking in!” someone says. We end up more in the area of high-tech heist – a bit of Mission: Impossible – than plucky war flick. It’s a bit shinier. It has lost some of that mid-20th-century retro cosiness. But the stop-motion remains warmer and more inviting than almost every animation emerging from the American giants.
We join the former inmates of Tweedy’s Farm as they enjoy an apparently idyllic life on a leafy island. Ginger and Rocky (now voiced by Thandiwe Newton and Zachary Levi) find their happiness shattered when Molly (Belle Ramsey), their daughter, goes on a wander and gets banged up in a new sort of chicken farm. The traditionalists at Aardman have got a moral argument here. Fun Land Farm, a dystopia in bold plastic colours, is serving the needs of the modern fast-food industry. The chickens, brainwashed into unthinking complacency, are in danger of ending their days as the contents of a bucket. The anger is as much at the soulless vulgarity of it all as it is at the cruelty. What a long way from savouring Wensleydale in an argyle tank top.
Most of this will be lost on younger viewers. And that is fair enough. Though Dawn of the Nugget is not on the same plane as a masterpiece like Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, it delivers zippy good-hearted jokes at a cracking pace without outstaying its welcome. There is some evidence of digital tinkering, but not enough to distract from the blinking oddness of those charmingly imperfect clay faces with their occasional visible fingerprints. There are some fine new villains. The voice work rumbles with buttered-crumpet charm. Middle-ranking Aardman is better than almost anyone else on top form.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is available on Netflix from Friday, December 15th
