It’s been 35 years since a British inventor and his intelligent pooch had a grand day out, sending themselves rocketing to the moon in response to a cheese shortage, and stop-motion animation has never quite been the same.
Since then, Nick Park’s subdued, quirky duo Wallace and Gromit have built quite the empire for themselves: three short films, a feature film (The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)), two Academy Awards, and a legacy built on being positive international cultural icons. It’s been a while since the duo have seen the light of day.
The pair has been absent since their short film Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008), and Park hasn’t had his hands in the dough since his previous feature film Early Man (2018). After former Wallace voice actor Peter Sallis’ passing in 2017, the future looked unknown for the duo.
Fortunately, Park, alongside co-director Merlin Crossingham, has crafted an absolute delight of a follow-up with Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)–not just a welcome return to form for the series, but the pair’s most creative and endearing outing yet.
The film picks up just as Wallace and Gromit have foiled the potential robbery plot of their former foe Feathers McGraw, with aspirations of stealing the Blue Diamond from the city museum. Sentenced to imprisonment at the local zoo (the first of the film’s many laugh-out-loud moments), Feathers devises a scheme to retrieve the diamond and get revenge on Wallace and Gromit.
Meanwhile, Wallace (now voiced by Ben Whitehead), invents a “smart” gnome named Norbot (Reece Shearsmith) to help Gromit around the garden. The gnome begins to develop a mind of its own, much to Gromit’s suspicion and concern. Norbot quickly impresses the neighborhood with his horticulture skills and finds work in the neighborhood, with Wallace creating a business around it.
After Feathers breaks into the police station’s security and hacks into Wallace’s computer, Wallace and Gromit must prove their innocence and save the town.
The duo has always relied on each other’s wit and opposing personalities to thwart villains, and Vengeance Most Fowl is no different, proving to be a well-balanced mix of thoughtful character development, sly humor, and charismatic action.
Much like the best of Wallace and Gromit’s adventures, namely their eternal shorts The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995), Park captivates his audience with wonderful execution and a fierce dedication to the title characters’ strengths, all in a brisk 79 minutes.
All of the new characters prove to be welcome additions. Chief Inspector Albert MackIntosh (Peter Kay) adds a secondary antagonist angle to the film with his dissatisfaction coming from his constant attempts at not looking stupid to the town he serves. Even when he succeeds, his assistant in training PC Mukherjee (Lauren Patel) is quick to keep him in check with a cheeky comment or question to his barking commands.
Norbot is the comedic center, with his cheeky voice and blissful subservient idiocy, all to the tune of the brilliant, fastidious presentation that Park and Crossingham employ at every turn. There’s an understated charm that exists alongside Norbot’s creepy demeanor–when you see the look on his face as he charges himself at the end of the day, the sheer terror that will flow through you will quickly subside into a state of unsettled hilarity.
2024 saw impressive strides in the world of stop-motion animation, the other major stride being Adam Eliot’s transcendent Memoir of a Snail (2024), which is one of the very best films of the year. As remarkable as Memoir was, however, its content is adult-oriented and existential. Vengeance Most Fowl finds itself in the crosshairs of animation suitable for all ages without leaning hard into suiting one demographic over another.
As animation and production companies continue to find workarounds and shortcuts at every corner with the use of Generative AI, undercutting the painstaking work of creative voices, Vengeance Most Fowl acts as a reminder of how innovation isn’t always found through technological advancement.
The only real fault with Vengeance Most Fowl is that some of the reveals are set up for predictability that more savvy filmgoers will see coming from a mile away, never at a detriment to the filmgoing experience. Even if the film’s reveals don’t always hit bullseyes in the presentation, Vengeance Most Fowl still surprises with its subversive comedy while sticking to the core of what makes Wallace and Gromit great, endearing characters.
Just like the nostalgic crackle of listening to your favorite record on vinyl, there’s something rewarding about seeing the thumbprints all over the characters of your favorite clay figures, showing the humanity that was put into every single frame. While the future was once uncertain for this dynamic duo, their outlook has never felt brighter.
Review Courtesy of Landon Defever
Feature Image Credit to Netflix via Wallace & Gromit