Story
Rocky (Zachary Levi) and Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) are happy. Together with their community of freed chickens from Mrs Tweedy’s chicken farm, including Mac (Lynn Ferguson), Babs (Jane Horrocks), Fowler (David Bradley) and Bunty (Imelda Staunton), they’re tucked away on an isolated island with everything they need, living the peaceful life they’ve always dreamed of.
It’s the perfect place to welcome their little chick Molly (Bella Ramsey) into the world. But things take a turn for the worse when developers cut down an adjacent forest to make way for a road that leads to ‘Fun-land Farms’, a chicken processing plant disguised as a fun park.
Ginger and Rocky try everything to stop Molly from finding out about the plant, and the world beyond their small island. However, Molly is very adventurous and one night she takes off, determined to see the world for herself and to find out why her parents are keeping such a fun-looking place from her.
On the road to find the farm, Molly meets Frizzle (Josie Sedgwick-Davies), an enthusiastic chicken who wants a Fun-land bucket and to experience the great adventure called ‘life’. At first glance, Fun-land Farms is everything they could ever have hoped for. It’s full of happy chickens, fun rides and all the food they could possibly eat. But when Frizzle is grabbed by a human and a collar is placed around her neck, Molly soon discovers that the neck tags they wear are mind-control devices that allow the chickens to happily walk to their own deaths. To make matters worse, Fun-land Farms is run by Mrs Tweedy (Miranda Richardson), who will stop at nothing to turn the chickens into tasty morsels and who deeply hates Ginger, whom she blames for destroying her old farm. When Ginger and Rocky team up with their old pals to help save Molly, they wind up getting much more than they bargained for.
Themes
Cruelty to animals; running away from home; greed; revenge; post-traumatic fear
Violence
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget has some violence. For example:
- Multiple flashbacks show Mrs Tweedy about to kill a chicken (often Ginger), as she brandishes knives and axes above her head, ready to strike.
- Mrs Tweedy has flashbacks of Ginger cutting the rope that sends her crashing back down to her farm.
- An egg, ready to hatch, falls off a shelf and sounds like it has cracked on the rocks below. Instead, it has fallen into a haystack.
- Molly’s pram rolls out of control and crashes into a pile of bushes. Molly is unharmed.
- Ginger has a nightmare in which she sees a shadowy figure of Mrs Tweedy holding an axe while proclaiming that her daughter ‘will be delicious’.
- One character is knocked back into a bunch of others as they are flung off the back of a truck.
- A bug is electrocuted on a fence.
- Chickens are grabbed around the necks, tagged, and then forced down a chute, while clearly terrified.
- Rocky attempts to fly into the chicken farm but gets caught on the barbed wire at the top of the fence and then electrocuted as he falls and touches it. Robots shoot guns at him and laser beams blast him as he tries to scale another fence. He then falls off onto a concrete slab and is sucked inside a vent.
- A man has a cake smashed in his face.
- A character smashes into a tree.
- Rocky is hit on the head by 2 rats and an umbrella.
- Rocky and 2 rats fall into the flames of a broiler but then rise with the umbrella and get stuck in a fan that spins them around the wrong way, into a vent.
- Molly is thrown into a wall.
- A man in a chicken costume grabs Frizzle and locks a collar around her neck.
- A group of chickens attack a guard with knitting needles and duct tape. He is later shown knitted into a straitjacket.
- Chickens are taken to their deaths while there are slicing sounds in the background.
- Huge human mouths eat chicken nuggets.
- Two rats land on a guard’s head and knock him down a vent.
- When Mrs Tweedy learns the chickens are hiding in a corn silo, she turns on the grinder, intending to kill them all. The chickens are eventually blasted out of the top of the corm silo.
- A character falls down the stairs while in a roller chair and a large eggshell crashes onto his head.
- Mrs Tweedy viciously knocks Rocky into the air and off the landing where he gets tangled in a bunch of wires.
- An insane-looking Mrs Tweedy chases Ginger with an axe.
- Mrs Tweedy and her new husband send masses of chickens walking towards their death. The chickens are zombie-like as they move en masse down conveyor belts to large choppers.
- Mrs Tweedy grabs Molly and pins her down, holding an axe above her head while daring Ginger to press a button and threatening to kill Molly.
- Molly bites Mrs Tweedy.
- Rocky cuts off Mrs Tweedy’s hair with an axe.
- An airborne axe hits Mrs Tweedy in the head and she falls into the grinder, along with the axe, and breaks the machine.
- The chickens hit 2 men with a truck as they attempt to escape.
- Mrs Tweedy is knocked off a truck by an old rooster, who then slams into a tree.
- Laser ducks target Mrs Tweedy and there are lots of explosions as the farm collapses around them.
- Chickens from another farm are reported to be kept in cages with up to 30 chickens at a time. These crates of crammed-in chickens are shown briefly.
- Ginger and the crew look ready to free the caged chickens, using a variety of weapons.
Sexual references
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget has some sexual references. For example:
- A character says, ‘There go the goujons’, as another character grabs at his bottom and holds on to his tail feathers.
- Characters are told to find a crack to hold on to as they climb up a silo wall. One rat grabs the bottom of another and the second rat cries out, ‘Not that crack!’
- Mrs Tweedy and another character appear to flirt mildly with each other, even though her new husband is present.
Alcohol, drugs and other substances
There’s no substance use in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
Nudity and sexual activity
There’s no nudity and sexual activity in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
Product placement
There’s no product placement in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
Coarse language
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget has some mild coarse language – for example, ‘idiot’.
Ideas to discuss with your children
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is the stop-motion, CGI animated sequel to the British blockbuster Chicken Run. It features a familiar cast of characters and a similar plot line to the first movie, and viewers are once again treated to a chicken’s perspective on things. The movie contains a number of violent scenes that make it unsuitable for young children, but it’s likely to be enjoyed by older audiences and fans of stop-motion entertainment.
These are the main messages from Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget:
- Listen to your parents.
- Trust your instincts.
- Never leave anyone behind.
Values in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget that you could reinforce with your children include ‘ingenuity’, ‘courage’, ‘friendship’, ‘teamwork’ and ‘empathy’.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget could give you the chance to talk with your children about the real-life consequences of things like:
- seeking revenge
- running away from home because you think that you know better than your parents
- being afraid to live because of what has happened in the past.
You could also talk about excessive consumption of meat, chicken farms and animal processing, and human greed.