Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget — Aardman hatches another winner

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for dramatic intensity and humorous action

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Children.

 

The moment you look away, they do something stupid.

 

Although Funland Farms appears to be a larkish paradise, Frizzle and Molly soon wonder
why all the other chickens seem ... well ... not in control of their own selves.

Such behavior obviously isn’t limited to human beings, given what kicks off the action in Aardman Animation’s marvelous new Claymation entry: another hilarious, stop-motion masterpiece from the folks who brought us Wallace & Gromit.

(This seems to be the season for animated poultry, given that this film follows hot on the wings of Illumination’s Migration.)

 

This sequel is something of a surprise, given that 2000’s Chicken Run was almost a quarter-century ago. But scarcely any time has passed in the lives of intrepid avians Ginger (voiced by Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi), since they orchestrated a mass escape from the farm run by evil Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy. The clutch has settled in an idyllic island sanctuary in the middle of an isolated lake, where life has been stress-free.

 

Their only visitors are skillful scavenger rats Nick (Romesh Ranganathan) and Fletcher (Daniel Mays), who pop up occasionally with supplies.

 

Ginger and Rocky soon are blessed with a hatchling, Molly, who grows into an adventurous — and restless — adolescent (now voiced by Bella Ramsey).

 

A surge of suspicious-looking trucks on the mainland fuel concern that a new chicken farm is being constructed, which prompts Ginger and the others to better conceal their community. Alas, that isn’t enough to deter the insatiably curious Molly, who crosses the water and then — having never before seen one — stops in the middle of a paved road.

 

(Insert the obvious joke.)

 

She’s rescued from a nasty death by Frizzle (Josie Sedgwick-Davis), a similarly adventurous young chicken beguiled by the slogan on all the passing trucks: “Funland Farms: Where Chickens Find Their Happy Endings.” All the trucks are filled with happily clucking chickens, apparently oblivious to the slogan’s implications; Molly and Frizzle hop aboard for what they believe will be a great adventure.

 

If that slogan seems a bit dire for a family-friendly comedy, the film’s title is significantly worse ... and the scripters — Karey Kirkpatrick, John O’Farrell and Rachel Tunnard, assisted by seven (!) more credited writers — also don’t shy away from depicting that consequence. (Remember, the Brits gave us Roald Dahl. They have faith in a youngster’s appetite for gruesome touches.)

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon — Clay play

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated G, and suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang

You have to love credits which promise that “No sheep were probed during the making of this film.”

Impish Shaun the Sheep has come quite far, since debuting as a supporting character in Wallace and Gromit’s Academy Award-winning 1995 short, A Close Shave. The rascally ruminant subsequently starred in 150 seven-minute claymation cartoons from 2007 through ’15, every one a masterpiece of stop-motion delight.

Shaun, right, watches hopefully as Lu-La attempt to start the flying saucer ... but, as a
holographic display warns, nothing will happen without an essential key-type gizmo,
which was lost shortly after landing.

The hilarious visuals notwithstanding, much of Shaun’s international appeal derives from the pantomime approach that eschews language. This isn’t exactly a silent world — Shaun’s escapades are backed by plenty of bleats, baas and other boisterous bellows, along with all manner of droll sound effects — but no character “talks” in anything approaching conventional language.

Even human co-stars merely mumble, mutter or murmur in something that never quite manifests as recognizable words or phrases.

This sets Shaun and his friends apart from Wallace and Gromit, who exist in a world of familiar verbal communication. (Well, except for Gromit the dog, who “talks” via heavenward glances, long-suffering sighs and shrugged shoulders.)

Shaun’s alternate approach isn’t terribly difficult to manage in a cartoon short; the challenge arises when the woolly scamp winds up in an 86-minute feature film. That’s where the talents of Aardman’s writers and animators are truly put to the test. They passed, with flying colors, in 2015’s Shaun the Sheep Movie; if this second big-screen outing isn’t quite as fresh — and perhaps not as emotionally touching — it’s no less clever or amusing.

Rest assured, directors Will Becher and Richard Phelan — and writers Jon Brown, Mark Burton and Nick Park — give us plenty to chuckle over.

Farmageddon shamelessly (and affectionately) riffs all manner of classic science-fiction franchises: from E.T. and Close Encounters, to The X-Files and Doctor Who, with similar nods to WALL-E, 2001: A Space Odyssey and even the factory scene from 1936’s Charlie Chaplin classic, Modern Times. The references aren’t limited to sight gags; composer Tom Howe’s vivacious score similarly channels everything from John Williams-esque themes to Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra” (heard during the tight close-up of a monolithic piece of bread emerging from a toaster).

We know we’re in good hands from the very beginning, when the Aardman Animation logo is introduced — with considerable pizzazz — by one of Shaun’s barnyard flock.

Early Man: Aardman lite

Early Man (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

According to the whimsical minds behind Early Man, soccer’s origins go way back.

No matter how much trouble Dug gets into, he can depend on his best friend — his
pet prehistoric pig, Hognob — to save the day.

British director Nick Park and his Aardman production team, best known for claymation superstars Wallace and Gromit, go prehistoric with their newest project: a gentle comedy set at the dawn of time, when cave folk tremble from exploding volcanoes, woolly mammoths and Jurassic-size ... ducks.

The droll production is a smooth blend of Park’s traditional puppet animation and scale-enhancing computer effects. All the characters can be recognized as Wallace’s great-great-great-many-more-greats ancestors: most particularly buck-toothed Dug (voiced by Eddie Redmayne), the most curious and idealistic member of a small Stone Age tribe led by genial Chief Bobnar (Timothy Spall).

They’re a motley bunch of meek eccentrics unwilling to hunt any game larger than rabbits, despite Dug’s insistence that tackling a mammoth might keep food on the table a bit longer.

It’s important to note, just in passing, that no rabbits are killed or otherwise injured during the course of this story ... although Mother Nature isn’t nearly as kind to Dug’s even more prehistoric ancestors, during a prologue that reveals How Soccer Came To Be.

This is merely the first of many fanciful touches emanating from Park and co-scripters Mark Burton, James Higginson and John O’Farrell. The humor is typically British: dry and mildly snarky, often relying on anachronistic touches. As an example, when confronted with a plate of sliced bread, one fellow enthuses that “That’s the greatest thing since...” and doesn’t really know how to finish the sentence.

At times, one senses the spirits of Monty Python hovering overhead.

Shaun the Sheep: Woolly bully!

Shaun the Sheep (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Needlessly rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.7.15

I’ve eagerly awaited this film since it was announced in early 2013, and it lives up to every expectation.

Cute, clever, whimsical, laugh-out-loud funny and even socially conscious. Couldn’t ask for more.

With a vengeful animal control officer hot on their heels, our heroes — from left, Shaun,
Slip and Bitzer — make a break for freedom. But that still leaves the bigger problem:
where to find the kindly farmer who is similarly lost in the big city?

Shaun the Sheep comes from the claymation wizards at England’s Aardman Animation, best known for Wallace & Gromit’s various adventures. Indeed, Shaun was introduced in 1995’s Academy Award-winning W&G short, A Close Shave, where character actor Peter Sallis (the longtime voice of Wallace) punningly pronounced the name as “Shorn.”

Shaun was granted his own British TV series in early 2007, but he didn’t travel to this side of the pond for a few more years. (Our household became early fans, thanks to a friend and some, ah, illicit Internet activity.) Shaun is much better known on these shores today, thanks to the perceptive folks at the Disney Channel.

Heavens, the impish little sheep even maintains an active social media presence, and has more than 5 million Facebook friends. Not ba-a-a-a-ad at all...

Ironically, Shaun may be overtaking Wallace & Gromit in terms of popularity, having thus far starred in 166 seven-minute shorts (assuming my count is correct). And therein lay the potential concern, for Shaun fans throughout the world: Could that brief, dialog-free format — so perfect in every respect — translate successfully to an 85-minute big-screen feature?

Worry not. The transition has been seamless.

Aside from its entertainment value, this feature-length “Shaun” is impressive in several other respects. The engaging storyline unfolds without any dialog; even when human characters converse, it’s solely in (deliberately amusing) unintelligible mumbles. And yet the plot is always comprehensible, with solid character development and all sorts of droll sidebar mischief. (The overly precocious Shaun, with a tendency to leap into half-baked schemes, always gets into trouble.)

The result, then, is a de facto silent movie, albeit one with marvelous sound effects and a superlative score from composer Ilan Eshkeri. He has managed a herculean feat, because the music essentially never stops. Much the way Howard Shore orchestrated full-blown symphonies for his Lord of the Rings and Hobbit scores, Eshkeri has produced a similarly ambitious musical portrait that augments, counterpoints and even carries the action, from scene to scene.

And yes, folks, you’ll detect underscore snatches of Shaun’s theme song, most famously sung by Vic Reeves, in its original pop hoe-down format. My only complaint is that this film never employs that foot-stompin’ version of the song, instead scrolling the closing credits to an updated, rap-inflected version by the pop duo Rizzle Kicks. (It’s cute, but it ain’t the same. So sue me.)

The Pirates! Band of Misfits: Swashbuckling silliness

The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG, and rather pointlessly, for mild rude humor 
By Derrick Bang

With characters dubbed “The Pirate with a Scarf,” “The Pirate with Gout” and “The Pirate Who Likes Sunsets and Kittens,” you just know this won’t be a sea saga in the vein of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Having finally learned why Queen Victoria really wants to purchase his beloved
ship's "parrot," Polly, Pirate Captain discovers that hell hath no fury like a
scorned queen ... and the situation is about to get much worse.

Indeed, Aardman’s The Pirates! Band of Misfits does its best to send up every bit of classic buccaneer lore. We should expect no less from the animation studio that brought us the lovable Wallace & Gromit, and went on to big-screen success with hits such as Chicken Run and Arthur Christmas.

This new film’s deliciously snarky script comes from British author Gideon Defoe, who adapted his own equally whimsical series of (thus far) five books, beginning with 2004’s The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists and continuing through this year’s The Pirates! in an Adventure with the Romantics. Fans cite Defoe as a worthy contemporary of Douglas Adams, Stephen Fry, Jasper Fforde and the Monty Python crew ... which, in turn, makes the Pirates books perfect fodder for the gleeful geniuses at Aardman.

Unlike Arthur Christmas, which was a wholly computer-generated production, The Pirates! Band of Misfits relies almost entirely on the clay animation used for Wallace & Gromit’s adventures. This lends a sense of real-world dimensionality and “warmth” that CGI still can’t quite replicate, along with the equally charming “faults” that result from working with clay: occasional finger smudges, rogue shadows and the “rippling effect” that characterizes some movement.

Then, too, the goggly eyes and pursed, often O-shaped lips are hilarious by themselves; one can’t help being captivated by these characters, and amazed by the numerous complex stage settings for any given scene. We’re sophisticated enough, these days, to recognize and appreciate the painstaking, meticulous, arduous work that goes into something as simple as having six pirates stroll down a London street.

The story begins as the impeccably groomed and luxuriously bearded Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) and his crew make port at a carefully concealed cove, where brigands from all over the world have gathered to compete for the coveted Pirate of the Year Award. The chief contenders are Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven), Peg Leg Hastings (Lenny Henry) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek), all of whom laugh at Pirate Captain’s interest in the skull-and-crossbones award.

After all, Pirate Captain’s crew hasn’t pillaged much booty, and the bounty for his capture is a mere £12.