Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023)

Aardman returns to the coop after twenty-three years, and the years show in the cast list before they show anywhere else. Julia Sawalha was plucked from the role of Ginger on the grounds that her voice had aged, a decision that generated a small storm about ageism in an industry that treats women as produce with a sell-by date. Thandiwe Newton stepped in, Romesh Ranganathan and Nick Mohammed joined the supporting ranks, and the ensemble now looks noticeably more like modern Britain. The chickens, being chickens, never mention it. Race is not a subject the film has any interest in raising, and it does not raise it.

The plot concerns a fortified poultry processing plant disguised as an amusement park, where collars suppress the birds' fear so the nuggets taste better. The villain is a fast-food magnate and his industrial operation, which gives the film a tidy critique of corporate greed and factory farming. It arrives through slapstick and heist mechanics, not sermons. Ginger still runs the commune; Molly is an adventurous daughter who drives the rescue; the mother-daughter spine gives the hens genuine agency. This is empowerment of the standard family-adventure variety, competent and unremarkable.

Elsewhere the ledger is bare. No LGBTQ characters, no climate framing despite all that agriculture, no body-positive thread, no neurodivergent characters, no historical revision, nothing that could be called lecturing. The film wants to entertain children and mildly shame a chicken nugget conglomerate. It does both. A pleasant, well-crafted, faintly unnecessary sequel, and there is no shame in that.