Chicken Run 2 – The Nuggets Menace is a poultry spy film (review)

The sequel that no one expected: Aardman relaunches the Chicken Run machine and seeks inspiration from Mission: Impossible. An infiltration film which does not reach the heights of the first part, but a very good surprise all the same.

At a time of franchises and reboots in shambles, it feels strange to write it: it took 23 years for the Aardman studio to continue the adventure Chicken Run, his first feature film and biggest stop-motion animated hit of all time. At this point, the hope for a hypothetical new installment had long since vanished, and that’s part of what makes Chicken Run: The Nugget Menace so friendly. Unexpected, this sequel broadcast on Netflix takes place a few years after the escape of the chickens from Mrs. Tweedy’s farm. Ginger (voiced by Thandiwe Newton) and her companion Rocky (Zachary Levi) have found a haven of peace on an island, far from humans.

But their daughter Molly (Bella Ramsey), intrepid like her mother, turns the corner and lands in a slaughterhouse disguised as a theme park, where her peers pass through before being transformed into nuggets… Ginger and the others put aside their freedom dearly acquired to infiltrate this ultra-secure building, worthy of a 007 villain’s lair.

Burlesque heist

If the first Chicken Run pastichait The great Escape in gallinaceae, The Nugget Menace is the exact opposite: a pure infiltration film between Impossible mission And James Bond, full of gadgets of all kinds, surveillance cameras to avoid, guards to knock out and elevator shafts to pull up by rope. So many clichés cleverly caricatured by Sam Fell (Souris City, The Strange Power of Norman), who takes over from Peter Lord and Nick Park as directors. After the first quarter of an hour, a bit sluggish, the adventure moves at 100 miles an hour, never short of little burlesque gags, English humor and big action scenes.

And visually, the maddening technical mastery of the Aardman animators hits the mark again like in 2000 (the genius of character design is as astonishing as at the time), Fell simply allowing himself the addition of a few digital special effects to densify the plasticine settings. The Nugget Menace could almost have established itself as a new classic of the family film if it did not forget along the way the libertarian spirit which fueled its elder, always unsurpassable.

Chicken Run 2: The Nugget Menace, by Sam Fell, with the voices (in original version) of Thandiwe Newton, Bella Ramsey, Zachary Levi… Available on Netflix on December 15. Duration: 1 hour 41 minutes.