Review: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)

Source

It’s always a risky proposition to return to a beloved story and try to expand it without somehow diluting or misunderstanding what made the original so great. This is something that a legacy sequel is easily prone to, as we’ve often noted on 3 Brothers Film and our podcast. Thankfully, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl avoids these common traps. Instead of a stale retread or simply a grasp at nostalgia, the newest adventure of the eccentric inventor and his loyal canine companion is a sturdy and entertaining family adventure that offers plenty of laughs and visual inventiveness.

In the decade plus since 2008’s Wallace & Gromit short, “A Matter of Loaf and Death,” the world has changed a great deal, not only in terms of what we expect from children’s animation but also film production generally. Computer animated films are the norm (even from Aardman Animation). Thankfully, creator Nick Park (working here with co-director Merlin Crossingham) has maintained the mix of stop-motion puppets and claymation that gave the original short films their charm. The fact that the world of Wallace and Gromit is made of actual miniatures and sets is part of the appeal; you can see that hand-crafted detail in the wool of Wallace’s new onesie, and the marks of the animator's hands and tools on the clay of the characters as they move.

Why would anyone go to such lengths to make a film in this way, when computer generated films can offer detail and high definition once unthinkable (consider the water in films like Moana or even Avatar: The Way of Water)? Additionally, stop motion animation is incredibly time consuming, one of the factors in the long periods of time between Park’s films. But Vengeance Most Fowl takes this fact as a metatextual theme for the film itself. The film is concerned with questions of why we do what we do and what makes life worth living in the age of seemingly miraculous technologies. It offers a defense of the human (and canine) touch that goes beyond fear mongering about malicious AI (though that’s certainly present in the film), and offers a positive vision of friendship and community fostered through simple tasks like gardening or making a pot of tea.

The plot of the film revolves around two central premises that elegantly overlap. The first is that the ever optimistic technophile Wallace has created a new invention that goes beyond the Rube Goldberg-type devices that have populated all the films in the series: the Norbot, a “friendly, SmartGnome” (your tolerance of such puns may impact your appreciation of the film) in the form of a AI powered robot garden gnome. The Norbot will efficiently and neatly complete all the tasks you need done around the house and garden, much to Gromit’s dismay as the Norbot turns his lush garden into a series of geometrically perfectly trimmed bushes and turf.

But the real trouble begins when an old foe, Feathers McGraw, the penguin villain of “The Wrong Trousers,” returns. Feathers McGraw is truly the fan favourite of the series, his blank expression and black eyes managing to convey a truly sinister aura. McGraw, from his cell, exploits the Norbot in one of the most charming computer hacking scenes in recent memory, turning his settings to “Evil” and creating an army of SmartGnomes to once again steal the Blue Diamond, which will be displayed at the retirement ceremony of Chief Mackintosh (Peter Kay). As in “The Wrong Trousers,” everything points to one of our heroes, this time Wallace, as the mastermind behind the heist. Can Gromit, with the help of the junior P.C. Mukherjee (Lauren Patel), stop Feathers McGraw and his army of gnomes? 

There’s something immensely satisfying about the film in the way it combines clever critique of our reliance on automation within the solidly English world of Wallace & Gromit. Theirs is a world of small Yorkshire and Lancashire towns, with houseboats, tea, and jumpers. The film feels both timeless in the world it portrays and completely relevant to today in its concerns. It manages to champion a return to humanity without feeling reactionary or stale in its concerns. In the end, the dangers of technology are that we are vulnerable to outside forces when we delegate simple tasks like trimming the hedge. It suggests that when we do, we lose sight of community and our connection to others. It is ultimately friendship, in Gromit and Mukherjee towards both Wallace and Mackintosh, that offers survival. Even if the Norbot’s settings are returned to “Good” at the end—I can’t help but think of the evil Krusty doll in the classic Simpsons Halloween special and its switch when I see the gag—there is value in making tea together.

Unlike so many animated films with their endless pop cultural references, the references in this film feel completely natural. They are visually inventive and entertaining even if one doesn’t get them: Feathers McGraw does pull ups in his prison cell (revealed to be the zoo) like Max Cady in Cape Fear. His submersible has an organ at the front, like Nemo in the classic Disney 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The final slow speed boat chase on a viaduct both references the real-life Pontcysyllte in north Wales, but equally recalls the final sequences of Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning. One of the ways the film achieves this is by making sure that the filmmaking comes first, and any reference is secondary. It’s what made the original “Wrong Trousers” so remarkable. It’s not just funny and full of puns, but it’s solidly filmed like a Hitchcockian thriller so that we’re drawn into the story. The film never winks at us, but lets us enjoy the world it's created first and foremost. 

Vengeance Most Fowl feels like a natural return to characters and situations that we may have forgotten we loved. Unlike the duo’s last feature length outing, Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which is good in its own way, this film avoids the celebrity voices (though sharp viewers will also note Diane Morgan, who plays Philomena Cunk of Cunk on Earth and other British series, as reporter Onya Doorstep) and DreamWorks-ification, and feels even more of a piece with the original set of films. This is all the more amazing, given that the original voice actor for Wallace, Peter Sallis, passed away. Ben Whitehead does an amazing impression, never spoiling the film by becoming uncanny.

I’m hard pressed to think of a better family film from recent years that is both great filmmaking and a well-earned theme, given the centrality of filmmaking craft and technology to the series. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is a real treat.

8 out of 10

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024, UK)

Directed by Merlin Crossingham & Nick Park; screenplay by Mark Burton, from a story by Nick Park & Mark Burton, based on characters created by Nick Park; starring Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith, Diane Morgan.

Related Posts