NEW FRIENDS, OLD ENEMIES.
In my review of the first feature film that Wallace & Gromit appeared in, the 2005 Curse of the Were-Rabbit, I expressed a longing for the evil penguin seen in the classic, Oscar-winning Aardman short The Wrong Trousers (1993). Well, I only had to wait two more decades for his comeback. I am pleased to report that Vengeance Most Fowl is just as hilarious, lovable and riveting as Wallace and Gromit’s last movie together.
Robbing Gromit of a hobby
Another day in the life of Wallace the inventor and his trusted beagle Gromit. As usual, most of Wallace’s inventions are nifty but perhaps not as useful or precise as one would hope for, and his latest idea robs Gromit of a favorite hobby. After finishing tea and toast, Gromit enjoys a bit of work in the garden. Wallace, who seems to have missed the point, introduces Norbot, a robotic garden gnome who can trim any hedge in a matter of seconds. Sure, perhaps Norbot has a tendency to leave very little in the garden intact… but he gets the job done, and that’s what’s important.
Gromit vehemently disagrees, but Norbot becomes their new business, a gardener for hire in the neighborhood. A wonderful idea, until their old arch-nemesis, Feathers McGraw, imprisoned in a zoo, hacks into Wallace’s computer and creates an army of Norbots that he can control for evil purposes.
A new voice for Wallace
The last time we saw Wallace & Gromit was in a 2008 short called A Matter of Loaf and Death, but it’s not like they’ve lost their touch. Peter Sallis, who used to do Wallace’s voice, may be dead, but Ben Whitehead is a more than capable stand-in. The film is a much-needed and relevant warning to those who embrace new technology without considering consequences. Norbot is a smart gnome, essentially a toy that doesn’t serve much of a purpose since a lot of people who choose to live in houses do so because they actually like toiling in the garden.
He goes from pointless to dangerous when Feathers McGraw gets his hands on him, perhaps a symbolic warning to those who refuse to question when and how we use AI. At the same time, the characters are as irresistible as ever, reintroducing Mackintosh from Curse of the Were-Rabbit, now a veteran who’s matched with a clever protégée, PC Mukherjee; they are led to believe that Wallace lies behind several thefts in the neighborhood. It’s all part of Feathers’s plot; the penguin is just as cool and wicked as in The Wrong Trousers, still trying to steal the blue diamond that got him locked up in the first place.
It takes a special kind of genius to make it all seem so fresh once again.
He’s almost outshone though by Norbot, the excessively efficient gnome who becomes even funnier the more he’s multiplied (he has a few things in common with the Minions). One of the film’s best scenes shows how he’s recharging, an event so annoying that Gromit has to move him as far away from his bed as possible, serving the story by giving Feathers a chance to take control, but also simply providing us in the audience with a good laugh. The film basically follows a template that we’ve seen many times before in Aardman’s works, but it takes a special kind of genius to make it all seem so fresh once again, with wonderful gags and a brisk pace that ends with an exciting chase, this time involving a narrowboat and a thrilling aqueduct climax.
This time, more than ever, Wallace learns a lesson about technology and the value of human-canine interaction. Which I’m sure is all forgotten in the next adventure.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl 2024-U.K. Animated. 79 min. Color. Directed by Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham. Screenplay: Mark Burton. Voices of Ben Whitehead (Wallace), Peter Kay (Albert Mackintosh), Reece Shearsmith (Norbot), Lauren Patel, Diane Morgan, Muzz Khan.
Trivia: Co-executive produced by Park and Peter Lord.
BAFTA: Best Animated Film, Children’s & Family Film.
Last word: “The evolution process once we’ve designed the characters moves to how they perform, so we did have [Norbot] blinking, looking, and talking in an elaborate way. However, the more we stripped Norbot back, the funnier he got. It’s that feeling of unease where even when he’s good, he looks a little unsettling. We locked his eyes to make him feel like a machine because we didn’t want him to feel like Pinocchio. That was really important. He rotates from the middle because we wanted him to feel like a robot. We didn’t want to anthropomorphize him into a young boy.” (Crossingham, Motion Picture Association)