The full spectrum of human experience fits into the curve of Gromit’s brow. The silent Plasticine pooch has been squinting, face-palming, and rolling his eyes at his companion Wallace’s (relatively) harmless Heath Robinson contraptions for three decades. As that rube’s Goldberg machines have evolved from The Wrong Trousers’ robo-pants to the AI-skewering smart-gnomes of its feature-length sequel Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Gromit’s reactions have only grown more nuanced by knowing when to hold the course. Their classic “harried straight dog and good-hearted buffoon” combo persists even as the cartoonish world around them takes small steps towards modernity. Rather than wagging an old fogey finger at a tech-savvy youth, like so much animated fare whose particular Luddite ideas can be boiled down to “maybe if you kids weren’t always on those phones,” Vengeance Most Fowl sticks to the best possible version of its old-school charms.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl does boast a bit of tech backlash, but the same kind that has been making its hilariously inefficient inventor look like a dope since the ‘80s—and there’s no better way to gently push back against an overreliance on the artificially generative than through painstakingly handcrafted stop-motion animation. But in the world imagined by Nick Park (who returns to direct here alongside longtime Aardman animator Merlin Crossingham), machines are only a real problem when taken advantage of by bad actors. And Vengeance Most Fowl features the return of one of the worst: Feathers McGraw, the Buster Keaton of kleptomaniac birds.
The straightfaced McGraw, a menacing penguin who disguises himself as a chicken with perfect fidelity using only a red rubber glove, was sent to zoo-jail by our Claymation heroes in The Wrong Trousers for stealing a diamond. From this silly cell, he plots his revenge, allowing the animators (and writer Mark Burton) to play with both prison-break gags and Bond villain references. Of course, Wallace (Ben Whitehead, doing an exceptional job taking over for the late Peter Sallis) and Gromit are none the wiser. They’re just trying to pay their bills, enjoy some tea, and get a bit of gardening done.
But even these debt-addled idealists, trying to make the most out of the simple life, can’t rely on the simple machines of slapstick forever. To help Gromit’s gardening, and to make some money with a landscaping business, Wallace builds the fix-it-all smart-gnome Norbot (Reece Shearsmith). As upsettingly cheery in disposition as McGraw is stoic, Norbot is mega-British nightmare fuel, barely marching along the stop-motion tightrope between enjoyably annoying and uncannily off-putting. Norbot can, seemingly, do anything. But it only really provides a cookie-cutter service, flattening the Northern England landscaping into geometric symmetry. And that's before there's an evil army of them!
This light yet kid-comprehensible criticism zings with the same zeal as the film’s jokes about its hapless, disinterested police chief (Peter Kay, more checked-out NYPD than Keystone Cop) and his go-getter new recruit (Lauren Patel). When things begin to break bad, and McGraw’s dastardly meddling puts the gnomes to ignominious use, a relentless onslaught of puns and masterful physical comedy stack atop Vengeance Most Fowl’s simple foundation.
While Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl doesn’t boast anything as purely imaginative and surprisingly thrilling as The Wrong Trousers’ Looney Tunes-like toy train chase, its best moments still revel in comedic self-deprecation. From the action-comedy of a puttering canal boat pursuit to the legitimate tension found during a foggy night’s use of a “gnoming device,” Park and Crossingham keep the pacing tight, the camera angles exciting, and the mise en scène dense enough to effectively evoke whatever subgenre they’re subverting in the moment. Even the manic gnome work song, riffing on tracks like “Heigh-Ho,” clicks into place.
After Netflix laid an egg with the lackluster Chicken Run sequel, it stands to reason that the streamer’s long-coming Wallace & Gromit follow-up might meet some skeptics. But by leaning on its silent-movie ethos, where trust in an audience’s appreciation of broad absurdity is housed inside a meticulously detailed world of sight gags, Vengeance Most Fowl is right in line with the rest of Aardman’s flagship franchise. Just as warm-hearted, bouncy, goofy, and unassumingly sharp as ever, the film makes the case that no matter how close Wallace and his out-of-time village get to our digitized reality, long-suffering Gromit will be there to provide grounding glares—and remind us to take a moment to pet your dog.
Director: Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham
Writer: Mark Burton
Starring: Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith
Release Date: December 18, 2024; January 3, 2024 (Netflix)
