Where I Watched It: Netflix

English Audio Description?: Yes

Cast: Thandiwe Newton, Zachary Levi, Bella Ramsey, Imelda Staunton, David Bradley, Jane Horracks, Nick Mohammed, and Miranda Richardson.

Written By: Carey Kirkpatrick, John O’Farrell, Rachel Tunnard, Mark Burton, Holly Walsh, Lynn Ferguson, Ben Willbend, Laurence Rickard

Director: Sam Fell

Let’s just talk about this right away. I did not like the first Chicken Run. I saw it once when it first came out, and I did not feel compelled to revisit it. 23 years later, Netflix feels compelled to do a sequel, with basically an entirely new voice cast, and some writer room fuckery. Four people are officially getting “Screenplay By” credits, with four more people getting “Additional Material By”, as some incredibly vague contribution to the finished product, and then two more people are credited with being Story Consultants. IMDB has TEN people under the writers section, and this is for a sequel. What’s missing? No one is credited with the creation of the characters in the first film. A lot of people touched this script over 23 years. It’s too damn much.

And it feels like it. Never mind the fact that Zachary Levi now has to contend with being a stand in for Mel Gibson, but we never needed this sequel. It does try to recap the first film for the audience, but in a way that makes Rocky look useless, because there’s a new chick in town, as after 23 years together, Ginger and Rocky finally made one baby. This is not how chickens work.

They live on an island, because an island full of chickens is void of predators, or humans finding the island, and one day their little baby decides to wander off. Of course she gets captured, and she finds herself in a factory farm with a goofy partner, and it’s up to the chickens to break in. But instead of just Ginger and Rocky, presumably every chicken from the original film is back, so I hope you paid attention.

It’s not an awful film, it does have some clever moments, but it can’t shake that feeling that it was the sequel we never needed. And worse, with all the cast replacements, and the time passing, it feels like one of those Disney animated sequels that came years later, like Cinderella 2. I know some people like those, but it isn’t the original, and it feels cheap.

Aardman is known for taking a lot of time with their claymation, but 23 years is a little excessive. I’m not sure why this exists.

The audio description didn’t disappoint me, as it usually points out the little details we need to know. Lots of things at the factory farm I don’t want to spoil, involving traps, gadgets, and mini golf that I’ll let you experience, but the audio description did a nice job.

What it couldn’t do was remind me who the other chickens were, and it couldn’t shake that feeling that while streaming has wiped “straight to video” off the map, this feels very straight to video. Legacy sequels can work, as Top Gun Maverick proved, but they rely a lot on the nostalgia for the first. This just feels like a sequel that was delayed 23 years.

Final Grade: C