Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget (NetFlix)

I have to be honest. Based on the closed ending of the first movie, this was NOT a franchise that lent itself to sequels. It's kind of nice how the end of this movie makes them chicken freedom fighters saving any chickens in need of help. But it's also not necessary.

Speaking of which, the entire problem of the movie would have been avoided if Ginger had simply explained to Molly why she didn't want her leaving the island. I would accuse this of being a problem of all badly written kids stuff, but the truth is this stuff infects projects supposedly aimed at grown-ups too. I think it's stupid and annoying, but I'm not going to get on some high horse and pretend it only occurred because the project is for kids. Bad writing on that level is constant in supposed adult projects as well.

Nobody was happy Ginger needed to be recast, and I think everyone was relieved that Rocky was. But going in, I wasn't aware that they had gotten back most of the rest of the original cast. You'd figure while people were freaking out about Ginger, Netflix would have promoted that fact and smoothed over any ruffled feathers. I can't believe I just said that.

This wasn't needed. If it were great I could forgive that fact, but it isn't remotely. It's kind of cute in places and there is SOME of the charm from the original. But it's definitely not something that needed to be made, and probably only got greenlit because Netflix believed a known IP was less of a financial risk. Financial risk assessment is not what I'd call the stellar baseline for great movies, which might be why Hollywood is so hard up for fresh ideas. The movie itself isn't terrible, but it never once made me feel like the original film needed that story continued. And for a sequel, especially for a long-dormant franchise, that's a problem.

Just to give you some context about my feelings of "Leave well enough alone", "The Matrix Resurrections" was widely hated. But not by me, because I felt it dealt with some unfinished business, and undid some things I disliked about the third Matrix movie (namely Neo and Trinity's underwhelming deaths). Here, the ending to the original Chicken Run was happy and fine and it didn't really need anything else added. Nobody NEEDED a fourth Matrix. But I get the logic of returning just to give Neo and Trinity a happy ending. The happy ending of the first Chicken Run however left few of that movie's fans unsatisfied. We didn't NEED anything past that. There was nothing to fix in hindsight.

Sigh. I guess this is how movies simply operate now. But I don't have to like that fact. And I think the movie, while cute, is pretty bland and mediocre when all is said and done. 3 stars.