Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Nick Park returns to the world of claymation with the second full-length Wallace & Gromit film, featuring the reappearance of the ruthless Feathers McGraw.
Smart thinking: Gromit and Wallace
Image courtesy of Netflix.
It has been six years since Nick Park brought us his singular brand of eccentric comedy. It’s good to have him back. After falling out with DreamWorks Animation over the attempted Americanisation of his work, Park returns to the north of England with all its attendant accents, phrases and low-fi action. Directed in tandem with Merlin Crossingham (Creature Comforts), Vengeance Most Fowl is strictly speaking a direct sequel to Nick Park’s Oscar-winning short The Wrong Trousers (1993), marking the return of the dastardly, expressionless diamond thief Feathers McGraw. A mute penguin with penetrating eyes, Feathers is in prison for the theft of the prized Blue Diamond, sent down to the local zoo after being outwitted by Wallace and his loyal beagle, Gromit. He is now, literally, “doing bird.”
Down at the police station, Chief Inspector Albert Mackintosh (voiced by Peter Kay) and his new assistant PC Mukherjee (Lauren Patel) are dealing with the usual criminal activity of the area (a missing bicycle saddle!), when they are flooded with new complaints. Wallace, the Leonardo da Vinci of suburban Yorkshire, has invented a garden gnome that can lighten the workload of Gromit. But Gromit actually enjoys his simple duties and feels usurped by this high-tech impostor, who swiftly converts Gromit’s beloved country garden into a sterile, monochromatic, hard-edged tribute to topiary. Nonetheless, the neighbours are impressed and soon Wallace is loaning out his gnome, Norbot, for considerable monetary gain. Meanwhile, Feathers, who is himself pretty tech-savvy for a Yorkshire penguin, spots an opportunity to turn the situation to his advantage by resetting the gnome’s online core protocol – and you know what that means.
Besides the pictorial delight of beholding Aardman’s claymation figures and folksy backgrounds, Vengeance Most Fowl is packed with comic detail, both verbal and visual. As Wallace dips into his copy of ‘Practical Inventor’, Gromit prefers to peruse Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own,’ while Lorne Balfe’s playful score cheekily pinches a few chords from John Barry (but not enough to risk copyright infringement). Blending the mundane with the melodramatic, the film mines a particularly distinct seam of comedy that is as charming as it is inventive. To quote Wallace himself, “it’s cracking, Gromit.” It’s champion, to boot.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Voices of Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith, Diane Morgan, Adjoa Andoh, Muzz Khan, Lenny Henry, Richard Beek, Merlin Crossingham.
Dir Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham, Pro Richard Beek, Screenplay Mark Burton, from a story by Nick Park and Mark Burton, Pro Des Matt Perry, Ed Dan Hembery, Music Lorne Balfe.
Aardman Animations/BBC-Netflix.
78 mins. UK. 2024. UK Rel: 25 December 2024. US Rel: 3 January 2025. Cert. U.
