Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget (PG, 101 minutes)
Wonka (PG, 116 minutes)
Every now and then a movie comes along that makes you laugh before you've even seen it, purely because of the title.
Who wouldn't flock to a second Shaun The Sheep caper as soon as they knew it was called Farmageddon (2019)? And now Aardman Animations has done it again with their Chicken Run sequel, beautifully subtitled Dawn Of The Nugget.
The original was Aardman's first feature film, from 2000. That more or less coincided with my family moving from London to the English countryside, where (like all city dwellers moving to the sticks) we promptly added a collection of chickens to our rural idyll.
We invited the children to name them. To no one's surprise, considering how much we all loved Chicken Run, they became Ginger, Babs, Bunty and Mac.
The kids are grown and back in town now, but I can't wait for them to see this sequel which, even taking into account the extraordinarily painstaking work that goes into putting these 'claymation' films together, is already a has been in the making all along. to make. Not to mention the 23 years we've all been waiting for what happens next.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget releases today in select theaters and on Netflix next Friday
Ginger (now voiced by Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi) become proud parents of the feisty Molly (Bella Ramsey) who, inspired by her father's moving stories about his old life as an American circus rooster, increasingly feels the need to spread. Wings
Inside an eggshell, Ginger (now voiced by Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi) continue to live blissfully on their island paradise, where they and their fowl friends are safe from predatory humans.
But then they become the proud parents of the feisty Molly (Bella Ramsey) who, inspired by her father's moving stories about his old life as an American circus rooster, increasingly feels the need to spread her wings.
Inevitably, her sense of adventure leads her into grave danger.
With her new friend, a Scouse chicken named Frizzle (Josie Sedgwick-Davis, sounding pleasantly like one of the Liver Birds of blessed memory), Molly finds herself in a vast chicken processing factory controlled by Ginger's old nemesis, the evil Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson).
Terribly dark deeds take place in this sinister place, clearly modeled on a Bond villain's lair. Mrs. Tweedy's husband, Dr. Fry (Nick Mohammed), has devised a way to brainwash the prisoners into raptures after spending their last days in a pastel-colored theme park with an all-you-can-eat buffet. until their slaughter.
Consequently, they will taste better if they are turned into a newfangled delicacy that Mrs. Tweedy plans to sell to a restaurant magnate. Yes, the dreaded nuggets.
In the meantime, Ginger, Rocky and their poultry group, including Babs (Jane Horrocks), Bunty (Imelda Staunton) and Mac (Lynn Ferguson), plus their rat allies Nick (Romesh Ranganathan) and Fetcher (Daniel Mays), must figure out how to tackle the formidable to enter the compound and save Molly from impending disaster. As Ginger says, “Last time we broke out of a chicken farm, this time we're breaking in.”
Dawn Of The Nugget, directed by Sam Fell, is wonderfully imaginative and beautifully animated
Ginger, Rocky and their flock, including Babs (Jane Horrocks), Bunty (Imelda Staunton) and Mac (Lynn Ferguson), plus their rat allies Nick (Romesh Ranganathan) and Fetcher (Daniel Mays), must figure out how to penetrate the formidable world . composed and frees Molly from impending doom
As before, grumpy World War II veteran Fowler (now voiced by David Bradley) gets many of the best lines, ominously warning that “careless screeching costs lives.” What a pleasure.
Although Dawn Of The Nugget, directed by Sam Fell, necessarily lacks the glorious novelty of the original, it is wonderfully imaginative and magnificently animated. Chicken Run writers Karey Kirkpatrick and John O'Farrell have returned to write the script and have done so with great verve and humor.
As before, grumpy World War II veteran Fowler (now voiced by David Bradley) gets many of the best lines, ominously warning that “careless screeching costs lives.” What a pleasure.
The same can't be said of Wonka, with its relentlessly forced quirkiness and a lead performance by Timothee Chalamet that is disturbingly never really true to the character created by Roald Dahl 60 years ago.
The 27-year-old brings a certain mischievous charm to the role, but Dahl's Willy Wonka was a complex, rather dark bay.
Chalamet strolls through this so-called “origin story” like a merry song-and-dance man, and is also presented less as an exciting young chocolatier than as an emerging magician.
Perhaps tellingly, the producer is David Heyman, whose credits include all the Harry Potter films.
Paddington director Paul King's lavish musical fantasy follows Willy as he strives to make his fortune in a city that resembles Dickensian London, controlled by a dastardly three-man cartel of manufacturers who water down their chocolate and use it to bribe the authorities .
Wonka, this derivative prequel and its instantly forgettable songs, felt naggingly like a greedy attempt to cash in on Dahl's creations.
There are some exciting sequences and fun moments in all of this, as you'd expect from a cast that includes Olivia Colman and Rowan Atkinson as the villains (albeit, in Atkinson's case, as the kind of crooked cleric he might sleep in to play).
And Hugh Grant makes the most of his shrunken CGI character: a cynical Oompa-Loompa. But I'm afraid the little guy with the orange face's cynicism is contagious.
From where I sat, this derivative prequel and its instantly forgettable songs felt whiny like a greedy attempt to cash in on Dahl's creations, rather than a film with heart and soul.
If it were chocolate, it would only be 25 percent cocoa.
Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget can be seen in select cinemas from today and on Netflix from next Friday.
The Inseparables (U, 90 min)
Not to be confused with Simone de Beauvoir's recently discovered autobiographical memoir of the same name, The inseparables is a somewhat cheesy children's film, an animation about a wooden string puppet named Don, voiced, I'm sorry to say, with woodenness to match by Dakota West.
Don is tired of being cast as a fool in puppet theater productions. He is a romantic who thinks he is more suited to heroic roles, and his dream comes true when he ends up free in New York's Central Park. He promptly reinvents himself as Don Quixote, an adventurer who gets the chance to storm windmills when he finds one on a miniature golf hole. But there is a chance to become a real hero when his old colleagues in the puppet theater are kidnapped by an unscrupulous brother and sister who try to sell them on eBay. Together with his sidekick, a toy dog, Don must save them.
It's true that writers Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow worked on Toy Story, as The Inseparables publicity claims, although the echoes of Pixar's 1995 classic are otherwise quite faint. That said, there's just enough to keep kids busy for an hour and a half on a wet December afternoon.
Tarrac (15, 96 minutes)
I liked it Tarrac, a formula-driven Irish-language film about an urban businesswoman (Kelly Gough) who, after returning from Dublin to her native Kerry to see her ailing father (Lorcan Cranitch), rejoins her old rowing team. Against all odds, they eventually compete for the prestigious Munster Cup. It's a familiar sporting underdog story, packed with all the usual clichés, but it's beautifully acted and beautiful to watch.
James Blunt: One Brit Wonder (15, 95 minutes)
Fans of James Blunt say the same about him. With unfettered access to the Old Harrovian singer-songwriter, a very sympathetic documentary confirms everything we already know: that the former army officer is a cheerful super guy with a crushing line of self-mockery.
James Blunt: One Brit Wonderwhich played in cinemas for an evening this week, can be rented or purchased from iTunes, Amazon and Apple Store from December 22.