Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget (2023) - Movie Review

The idea of making a sequel to Aardman’s first feature has been floating around since that film initially came out, and considering modern trends towards legacy sequels and the like, it would make sense for them to attempt it around now. It helps that their last film, the Shaun The Sheep sequel, was bloomin’ fantastic and a high benchmark for a studio that’s already a legend in the industry. However, for both good and bad, this is quite a different clucker from the original.

A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2020) - Movie Review

Within the first minute of Aardman’s latest feature, there is a shot featuring a shop named Milliway’s. Thirty seconds after that, a sign for H.G. Wheel’s Auto. This sets the pace for the 87 minutes to follow, as the studio’s usual penchant for visual gags, both foreground and background, takes on a rather niche dimension, filling pretty much every moment with some form of tribute or reference to the older sci-fi canon. This seriously makes Ready Player One look like amateur hour for films designed to make film nerds look through every frame with a fine-toothed comb, and it certainly got me more attentive than usual to spot as many as I could.

Early Man (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: The simple life for Dug (Eddie Redmayne) and his tribe of cavemen is about to be interrupted when the Bronze Age ruler Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston) kicks them out of their meadow and leaves them to fend for themselves. Desperate to save his tribe, Dug challenges Nooth to a game of soccer: If Dug and his team win, they get their meadow back. As the tribe practices the ancient sport, and Nooth prepares to make bank from the match, the heat is on to see who will win this battle of the Ages.

Shaun The Sheep Movie (2015) - Movie Review

When I was a kid, a friend of the family gave me a CD-ROM containing an Aardman showreel with a bunch of their commercials, a couple of Angry Kid shorts and even a scene from Chicken Run. Over the next year or so, I would just watch everything on that CD over and over again; I think I’d still be doing that now, if I hadn’t unfortunately lost it some years back. Along with giving me a better appreciation for the artistry behind animation and a mind state that viewed advertising as a means of entertainment more than anything else, it also cemented in my brain that Aardman was a force to reckoned with.

Between their more family friendly works like Wallace & Gromit and The Pirates: Band Of Misfits, their darker material like Chicken Run and Angry Kid and even their commercials like the classic Chevron talking cars and that one condom PSA 'Nobs In Space' (yeah, check that one out here), Aardman have maintained a consistent track record that very few production companies, animated or otherwise, can lay claim to. The only possible contender for their position at the top is Laika, but they’re still relative newcomers so only time will tell on that front. So, when the trailers hit for Aardman’s new feature film… no question, even if I wasn’t doing reviews, I had to see this thing.