MIDNIGHT REVIEWS Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
I’m a happy, nifty Norbot; I like to write reviews!
Matthew D. Smith also has a podcast he co-hosts with Leslie Wai. You can find it here.
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (1hr 22mins)
Directed by: Merlin Crossingham, Nick Park
Featuring: Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel
Synopsis: Wallace and Gromit return, this time joined by a friend built and designed by Wallace. This machine ends up catching the attention of Feathers McGraw. The dastardly penguin plans his escape and… his revenge!
Review: Wallace and Gromit, as characters and the films themselves, are by now national treasures. Each movie features more charm and care in any five minute selection than some films feature in their entire runtime. This is care into the script, with repeated viewings actually rewarding viewers with subtle gags. This is care into the animation, with Vengeance Most Fowl taking a reported eighteen months to produce (despite this hefty amount of time, the film manages to be timely).
There has also been great care taken into recasting Wallace. Peter Sallis’ passing means the baton had to be passed on, and Ben Whitehead does a cracking job emulating prior performances. Anyone expecting a perfect impression might be a touch let down; at times Whitehead’s voice sounds a little strained compared to Sallis’ deeper, warmer intonation. But apart from this small note, Wallace is back in business.
And business is a-booming for old Wallace. After creating a machine, Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), to help Gromit with his gardening, the entire neighbourhood is interested in having their own. The only problem is, Norbot’s programming has been turned to the evil setting by Feathers McGraw, last seen and still in prison/the zoo after his crimes in The Wrong Trousers. Thus their helpful hands and smiling faces cover up the fact these machines are actually enabling McGraw’s escape.
Britain’s dynamic duo.
The no-good penguin is as amusing to watch as ever. Like the aforementioned charm and care, McGraw as a plasticine model is more expressive than some actors. Despite his lack of dialogue (and mouth!) the animators are able to express every nuance, every prescient thought the character has. That I was left wanting more is testament to the film makers (there hasn’t been a more cliché sentence written in the history of movie reviews, but it’s really quite true here).
Norbot is the opposite in some ways, in that he’s an utter chatterbox. A character that on paper would threaten to be highly irritating comes out the other end as incredibly hilarious. This is down to both Shearsmith’s delivery and the animation, with Norbot acting as a timely commentary on AI and technology in general. Despite the simple presentation of good or evil (and other humorous options in between), the film posits the simple reminder that it isn’t the machine that’s good or evil. It’s what the user chooses to do with it.
The film is almost three times longer than The Wrong Trousers; at times, it does feel like it. The better Wallace and Gromit instalments tend to be the ones that’re shorter. It’s not that the longer iterations outstay their welcome, more that the feature-length Wallace and Gromits tend to adhere to story structures we’ve seen before. In the shorter ones, despite the reduced play time, it feels as if the creators are freer to simply tell the story they want to tell.
An absolute success.
That being said, there’s enough here that this isn’t a huge problem. The film is peppered with enough gags and genuine emotion that the runtime isn’t even felt by younger viewers (I have personal experience of this — my son particularly enjoys emulating Norbot charging while I’m trying to sleep).
Call backs to previous works are done well. The prevalence in modern movie making is to point incessantly at the reference, but in Vengeance Most Fowl these references are as subtle as some of the other gags (and actually funny too). If the joke goes over someone’s head, it also doesn’t matter as the moment fits its scene well, as opposed to being crowbarred in.
The team that made Vengeance Most Fowl have actually achieved the impossible (or at the very least, incredibly difficult). They’ve made a children’s movie that features no annoying characters, subtle messages instead of bludgeoned life lessons and on repeated viewings, the movie doesn’t offer just more gags, but opportunities to enjoy this, Britain’s dynamic duo, on further levels. An absolute success on every level that matters.
Matthew D. Smith likes to overshare his views on movies and TV shows whenever and wherever he can. Indulge him, and follow him on Twitter or enjoy the podcast he co-hosts with Leslie Wai.
