Animated
2023 / 101 minutes
RATING: 8/10
Twenty-three years ago, Rocky and Ginger were trying to break out – they had to get off their farm to escape being made into chicken pot pies. This time, they have to break in to save their beloved little girl, Molly, from being turned into a bucket of nuggets. Dawn of the Nugget is that rare sequel that lives up to the original… and maybe even surpasses it.
Rocky, Ginger, and their fellow chicken friend escapees have made a new and very safe life on an isolated island in the middle of a large lake and things couldn’t be more idyllic. The only discontented citizen? Rocky and Ginger’s young daughter, Molly, was born on the island and has never known anything else. Molly wants to see what’s out there, across the water, and her mom’s evasive answer – “there’s nothing over there for us” – isn’t doing anything to calm her daughter’s wanderlust.
And then the humans come a-knockin’. Across the water, the chickens see a new factory is being built, and not just any sort of factory – this “Funland Farms” facility is a chicken processing plant! Rocky and Ginger don’t share this news with Molly because they think it’d be too scary for her, but in trying to protect Molly, they leave her completely in the dark about life outside of their island. That quickly becomes a problem when Molly sets off on her own, crosses over water, and ends up walking right up to a Funland Farms truck. She doesn’t understand the danger, and quickly gets caught and tossed in with all the other captive chickens.
Now, mom and dad have to organize a rescue mission, and here’s where it gets super fun for parental viewers. There are all sorts of Mission Impossible and James Bond kinds of escapades, with laser-guided exploding robot ducks, brainwashed chicken minions, and an evil computer genius running the show.
Cautions
The main caution would be age-appropriateness. There are loads of cute animated characters here, which might have parents thinking this should be fine for their littles. But this is a rescue mission where the stakes are such that if they don’t succeed, Molly and friends are going to be turned into bite-sized nuggets. That’s definitely more peril than a normal kid flick. I think this is best for 10 and up, and I’ll make my case by highlighting two scenes that happen pretty close to each other.
- Mrs. Tweedle is back – somehow the villain from Film #1 survived, and in this one she has another enormous fall. She lands in the giant metal funnel that sends chickens into the nuggetifier. As the machine starts gurgling, with this oversized human load, kids are going to wonder if we just saw Mrs. Tweedle get killed! And it takes a minute or two to learn that no, it isn’t so – phew! She does emerge out the other end, breaded, but still entirely intact.
- Next, the now enraged woman goes all Jack Nicholson from The Shining as she uses her axe to peel back the roof of the chickens’ getaway truck. It is only a moment, which minimizes the terror – I don’t think any kids over 12 will be super scared, but all bets are off for the under 10s.
Language concerns include a mention of “ye gods” and one instance each of “hell” and “blooming heck.”
I don’t think this is trying to put us off of eating chicken, but when chickens are the good guys, and chicken nuggets are the worst thing imaginable, I can imagine that inadvertent vegan indoctrination is a possibility.
Conclusion
We all want to protect our own little chicks, but eventually they have to leave the nest, and we do need to get them ready! Like the original Chicken Run, this is a movie aimed squarely at parents, and what makes it special is that the moral to this story – don’t helicopter-parent your kids – is one we can actually appreciate and learn from. How many Hollywood flicks can you say that about?
Check out the trailer below.
