A sequel that grown-up fans of the original film had long given up waiting for, and today's children weren't waiting for at all. Why does 'Chicken Run 2', which meets modern demands, get lost in time and turn from a homemade original chicken pie into...

Ask a teenager today if they know the animated film 'Chicken Run', and the probability of a negative answer is quite high, because even those born in the same year as the film's release are now 23. And while such a question is not fair to apply to the average animated film from Disney/Pixar or DreamWorks (like 'Monsters, Inc.' and 'Shrek', which came out a year later) because these companies are industry mastodons, the creations of Aardman Animation are niche examples of stop-motion animation, though high-quality, they rarely treat viewers.

Once successful (and still the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film) parody of the 1963 film 'The Great Escape' has gained a sequel two decades later, but its necessity raises questions. This toothless sequel is unlikely to please fans of the original, and for modern viewers who don't know the predecessor, is the sequel really needed on its own?

The entire brood of chickens rescued from the farm of cruel Mrs. Tweedy has found their paradise island, and Ginger and Rocky have even had a child. The chick Molly, who inherited her mother's character, one day runs away from home, where she was so carefully protected by Ginger, who hasn't forgotten the dark times. A new acquaintance and a thirst for adventure lead Molly to another 'paradise' corner – a poultry farm, where every chicken dreams of 'finding their bucket'.

'I haven't seen that look in a long time!'

Peter Lord and Nick Park, responsible for the original 'Chicken Run', are now executive producers, but the paths they have taken have not yet been overgrown with hedges, because director Sam Fell followed the plot path step by step, only increasing the runtime.

The viewer is invited to recall the original scenes, sympathetically reinforced by the familiar musical theme; the chickens retain their unique personalities, and the antagonist is still the same Mrs. Tweedy. But now the escape is not from a closed territory around them, but from the closed circle of thoughts and worries in their heads. And perhaps there is no point in criticizing a sequel created according to the patterns of all modern sequels, if not for the time gap between the parts.

The animated film 'Chicken Run 2' exaggerates established patterns, for example, behavioral ones. Therefore, each chicken will more sharply demonstrate personal differences, and jokes will revolve around established templates. For example, that a rat chews wiring even before birth, and chickens lay eggs just by hearing the word 'farm'. This and other humor built on homages to 'Mission: Impossible' looks good, but is quickly forgotten in the context of a bland story.

Despite the creators' attempts to raise difficult topics of panic attacks and parental control, they fail to deeply develop them due to the superficial description of new characters and a story cleansed of 'excessive' drama.

'Chicken Run' was an intimate drama about the tragedy of souls seeking freedom. Oppressive colors, terrible parallels with concentration camps, the unity of characters in a common struggle, and adult humor made the film perfectly balanced. The sequel increased the contrast of colors, reduced the degree of tragedy, replaced courage driven by a specific goal with recklessness born of teenage crisis, and the small farm turned into a huge bunker assembled from Tony Stark's house and Vector's fortress from 'Despicable Me'.

And the influence of new technologies is hard to miss. 'Chicken Run 2' is the apotheosis of animation development. The creators went all out and used, it seems, all available types of textures and possible plays with shadows and contrasts. Want an authentic chicken house made of hay – you got it, and let's contrast it with a futuristic farm – sure. But this sacrificed the intimacy of the story and the focus on characters.

But it's hard to call 'Chicken Run 2' a completely bad film. At least because it is based on the first part, which it does not try to surpass. Netflix often sins by creating 'convenient' projects. More often these are remakes or sequels that are composed in the image of the original but meet the modern requirements of the Western viewer: agenda, dynamics, simple plot development. But was it really necessary in this case to change the menu from chicken pies to refined nuggets?