LONDON: There is something very heart-warming about the fact that Aardman Animation’s unique style of filmmaking continues to find a huge international audience, even in this age of photorealistic computer-generated imagery and breath-taking digital volume sets. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @arabnews.lifestyle The British studio has not released a full-length movie since 2019’s “A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon” – though this year’s excellent contribution to the second season of “Star Wars: Visions” showed the team has lost none of its touch – and stays with an existing property for its newest release. “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget” is a follow-up to Aardman’s 2000 feature debut – and the world, off-screen and on, is a very different place. Aardman is now partnered with Netflix (which will also release an upcoming “Wallace and Gromit” movie) and has refined its use of stop-motion animation to hitherto unparalleled heights, combining that distinct visual style with seamlessly integrated CGI and the broader visual scope such a transition enables. For the chickens themselves, who escaped their prison camp factory back in 2000, life is now an idyllic island sanctuary where they are safe from humans and their sinister machinations. Ginger and Rocky (Thandiwe Newton and Zachary Levi taking over voice duties from Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson) have a daughter, Molly (Bella Ramsey), who is desperate to know more about the wider world. Despite her parents’ warnings, Molly investigates a nearby Bond-esque facility and winds up inside a state-of-the-art poultry farm. Ginger, Rocky, and their cohorts set off on a rescue mission that serves as an excuse for plenty of distinctly British silliness and classic Aardman visual comedy hijinks. It is joyous to see the filmmakers flexing their technical muscles, pushing the limits of stop-motion animation in wonderfully innovative new directions without losing that attention to detail that has made Aardman movies so beloved. The plot, admittedly, is a little formulaic, but when the love for this type of animation is so obvious, such predictability is more of an asset than a criticism – expect all the tongue-in-cheek references and loving parodies you can handle. And enjoy each and every single one.