I was keen to see this movie, as I loved the original Chicken Run.
It's a long time since the first movie, so naturally the voice actors have changed. This was OK, except I thought Thandiwe Newton sounded a bit too " posh" to play Ginger. I got used to it (love Thandiwe!), but I did miss Julia Sawalha and I think the original had a better cast.
The main problem for me was the way the chickens are now portrayed. In the first movie, they were hens living at a poultry farm, having to lay a certain number of eggs each day, or risk getting topped by the farmer's wife. So they were basically chickens living like chickens. What made it amusing, of course, was the hens' human qualities, and the fact that whole thing ran like the satirisation of a prisoner-of-war escape movie.
However in the sequel, all pretence at "chicken life" has gone; the chickens live exactly like humans, and are in effect just humans who look like chickens. Egg laying is a rare event; it's all farming and building and lounging in deck chairs sipping drinks. The spivvy rats with their dodgy goods are now lovable. And to make matters worse, Rocky and Ginger have a ghastly brat of a kid called Molly.
As the plot of this movie is also pretty weak, I found it hard to get involved. God forgive me, I was dying for Molly to get turned into a chicken nugget.
Didn't work for me. I find it hard to care about chickens who have turned into humans.
It's a long time since the first movie, so naturally the voice actors have changed. This was OK, except I thought Thandiwe Newton sounded a bit too " posh" to play Ginger. I got used to it (love Thandiwe!), but I did miss Julia Sawalha and I think the original had a better cast.
The main problem for me was the way the chickens are now portrayed. In the first movie, they were hens living at a poultry farm, having to lay a certain number of eggs each day, or risk getting topped by the farmer's wife. So they were basically chickens living like chickens. What made it amusing, of course, was the hens' human qualities, and the fact that whole thing ran like the satirisation of a prisoner-of-war escape movie.
However in the sequel, all pretence at "chicken life" has gone; the chickens live exactly like humans, and are in effect just humans who look like chickens. Egg laying is a rare event; it's all farming and building and lounging in deck chairs sipping drinks. The spivvy rats with their dodgy goods are now lovable. And to make matters worse, Rocky and Ginger have a ghastly brat of a kid called Molly.
As the plot of this movie is also pretty weak, I found it hard to get involved. God forgive me, I was dying for Molly to get turned into a chicken nugget.
Didn't work for me. I find it hard to care about chickens who have turned into humans.