WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL:
ANOTHER DELIGHTFUL AND HYSTERICAL ADVENTURE WITH AARDMAN’S DYNAMIC DUO!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: *** ½ out of 4
NETFLIX
Wallace, Gromit, and Norbot in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
The bumbling, cheese-loving inventor and his mute dog sidekick are back for another feature-length adventure in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the latest stop-motion animated feature from Aardman Animations and the first full-length Wallace & Gromit film since 2005’s Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I really enjoyed the original 3 Wallace & Gromit short films with 1993’s The Wrong Trousers being my favorite as a kid and even as an adult I find the shorts incredibly funny and imaginative.
The shorts helped establish both Wallace & Gromit and Aardman as stop-motion icons thus leading the studio to produce other high-quality projects such as Chicken Run, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, and Shaun the Sheep (Which actually originated from the Wallace & Gromit short, A Close Shave) as well as a couple computer-animated films like Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas. The first Wallace & Gromit movie, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit which was made under DreamWorks Animation is also quite funny and quirky though maybe not as snappy as the jokes from the shorts, I still laughed hard upon revisiting it last night and consider it a fun nod to classic monster transformation movies (Just replace the Wolf Man with a giant rabbit), not to mention one of the greatest dogfights in all of cinema.
Which brings us to their second feature film nearly 20 years after The Curse of the Were-Rabbit with Wallace & Gromit creator, Nick Park (Chicken Run, Early Man) directing alongside Merlin Crossingham and Ben Whitehead (The Pirates! Band of Misfits) taking on the role as the voice of Wallace after Peter Sallis’ retirement and death. The film was given a limited theatrical release followed by a Netflix release soon after and since I saw Were-Rabbit in theaters when it initially came out, I went to the theater to watch Wallace and Gromit’s latest cinematic adventure…many laughs were had!
I will say The Curse of the Were-Rabbit has the stronger story and this one plays more like an extended Wallace & Gromit short, but it’s just really, REALLY funny. I laughed quite a bit during this film at various different jokes and visual gags throughout while still being invested in what was happening between the characters.
The film is set several years after The Wrong Trousers with the sinister diamond thief, chicken disguising penguin, Feathers McGraw still locked up in the zoo and follows Wallace inventing a robotic gardening gnome called a Norbot (voiced by Reece Shearsmith-The World’s End, In the Earth, Saltburn) to assist Gromit with his garden. But when Wallace gets the idea of starting a business with the Norbot, it catches the attention of Feathers McGraw who plots to reprogram Norbot and use it to enact his revenge on Wallace and Gromit.
The film also features the voices of Peter Kay reprising his role from The Curse of the Were-Rabbit as Chief Inspector Albert Mackintosh, Lauren Patel (Everyone’s Talking About Jamie) as PC Mukherjee, and Diane Morgan (Me Before You, After Life, Rogue Trooper) as Onya Doorstep (Hehe, great name!).
Overall, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is another crackingly funny animated adventure with Aardman’s dynamic duo and unlike something like last year’s Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, this actually felt like a worthy reunion with these beloved childhood icons that retains what made them charming to begin with. The movie does hit similar beats as the original Wrong Trousers short, but it never feels like a rehash of its plot and shows what happened after the short and aside from some plot points and callbacks, it has enough elements to make it its own thing like the “smart” gnomes and the bumbling police officers trying to catch Wallace after being framed for McGraw taking control of the gnomes and using them for evil.
The film is essentially about Wallace becoming too dependent on his inventions and Gromit expressing his concern for his master, kind of like how we’ve become very reliant on technology in our daily routines and we’re often clueless when trying to do something ourselves without our gadgets. It’s both a really funny and relevant scenario for Wallace and Gromit especially for this movie where yet another one of his inventions causes mayhem in town.
The movie incorporates a lot of surrealism with its humor and suspense (Which is saying a lot given that this a continuation of a short about robotic trousers going amuck) which fits better with Wallace & Gromit than when Aardman tried it in the Chicken Run sequel. Chickens trying to escape from a farm before they get made into pies doesn’t really lend itself to much surrealism and bizarre humor compared to a movie about an eccentric inventor and his mute canine sidekick that’s ironically smarter than his owner and the wacky adventures they go on.
All of that is exemplified with Norbot and the “smart” gnomes which are both extremely funny and unsettling at the same time throughout the film. Even before Feathers reprograms them, they have this unnerving look to them and accompanied with this humorous robotic voice gives you a laugh and the creeps, sometimes even at the same time.
The animation is stellar especially when you think about the fact everything onscreen was created by hand from the plasticine puppets to the sets and subtle details with the characters’ movements (You can actually see the puppeteers’ fingerprints on the characters’ bodies at times). Aardman always knocks it out of the park with their stop-motion and their work here really pushes the envelope for the medium with one of the best sequences being Wallace’s contraption he goes through in the morning that is a huge step up from sliding down the bed and down a trap door to the kitchen.
The voice acting is great with this being my first time hearing Ben Whitehead as Wallace, he sounds very close to Peter Sallis from the original shorts and 2005 movie. He effectively captures the eccentric nature and cluelessness of the character without feeling like a clone of Sallis’ voice, Whitehead brings his own energy to Wallace.
Peter Kay and Lauren Patel get some good laughs as the voices of these two police officers on Wallace’s tail who think he’s the mastermind behind the gnome attacks. Very well-timed physical slapstick and witty exchanges between the both of them and Patel being a standout as Mackintosh’s quirky trainee.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is a delightful and hysterical second film in the Wallace & Gromitfranchise that is sure to please fans both old and new. I still think The Curse of the Were-Rabbit had a stronger story and felt more cinematic by comparison, but this one whether on Netflix or in theaters is worth grabbing the cheese and crackers for regardless.
No comments:
Post a Comment