It’s difficult to believe that the last stop-motion Wallace and Gromit short graced our screens way back in 2008. Describing the pair’s new outing as a return to form is unnecessary: this duo never lost it in the first place.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is a direct sequel to 1993’s The Wrong Trousers, a deserved Oscar-winner which, despite lasting just 30 minutes, has a marvellous cinematic sweep, every frame loaded with detail. Co-director Nick Park originally intended Vengeance Most Fowl to last half an hour, “but we started thinking of more ideas… it kept growing bigger.” The finished film comes in at 79 minutes.
There a few longeurs here, but the larger scale is generally a good thing. Mark Burton’s screenplay manages to keep a host of plates spinning, namely how humans interact with new technology and how difficult it can be to maintain longstanding personal relationships. Reassuringly, West Wallaby Street hasn’t changed much since 2008, Ben Whitehead’s Wallace a convincing replacement for the late Peter Sallis. Flashbacks show the arrest and incarceration of Feathers McGraw (pictured below), the evil penguin last seen trying to pull off an elaborate diamond heist in The Wrong Trousers; bringing the character back in search of revenge was a masterstroke.
Wallace’s latest invention, an irritatingly chirpy "smart gnome" Norbot (voiced by Reece Shearsmith) is ripe for sabotage, and seeing exactly how he's hijacked for nefarious ends is a joy. Wallace’s cloth-eared indifference to Gromit’s needs is painful to witness, an obsession with gadgetry leading him to invent a device for patting his dog’s head so that he doesn’t have to. Norbot is introduced to the mute canine with the words “he’s voice activated”, at which poor Gromit can only shrug.
Gromit’s wonderfully expressive eyes and brow are the stars of the film, and there’s something miraculous about witnessing just how much emotion and frustration can be conveyed by the smallest of movements. McGraw, by contrast, is impassive and inscrutable, Aardman’s animators hinting at his dark heart through blinks and waddles alone. The cinematic in-jokes come thick and fast, my favourites being nods to James Mason’s organ-playing Captain Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and a hysterical reference to Connery-era James Bond. Gromit’s resourcefulness grows as his master’s mojo ebbs away, Wallace falsely accused of a slew of robberies and so reliant on technology that he’s even forgotten how to use a teapot.
That Gromit will save the day is a given, and the climactic chase sequence is almost as good as the finale of The Wrong Trousers. There’s sterling support from Lauren Patel and Peter Kay as police officers, the latter reprising his role in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Diane Morgan pops up as a reporter from Up North News, her anchorman the splendidly monikered Anton Deck. You marvel at the mechanics of how the film was actually created, the 35 animators charged with creating five seconds of footage a week part of a 260-person production crew. A treat – do try and see this on the big screen.
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