Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl ★★★★

Released: 25th December (BBC), 3rd January (Netflix)

Director: Nick Park

Cast: Ben Whitehead, Reece Shearsmith, Peter Kay & Lauren Patel

Before Paddington entered the cultural lexicon as a British icon (a status solidified thanks to Paul King’s Paddington 2), there was Wallace & Gromit. The wacky claymation adventures between the loveable (yet naive) cheese-loving inventor and his loyal dog have delighted audiences since their 1989 debut A Grand Day Out. Thanks to their short films (and a feature-length movie), audiences believed the moon was made out of cheese, rabbits can transform into were-rabbits and criminal mastermind penguins can’t be trusted! But it’s the “creature comforts” that have made the pair endearing, filled with their Northern charm, cracking contraptions and genuine love of stop-motion animation that permeates throughout every frame. They are a national treasure and should be celebrated as one.

Their latest adventure, Vengeance Most Fowl, sees the iconic duo return to the screen with something new to the franchise – a direct sequel to The Wrong Trousers. As the best film in this long-running series, it gave us one of the greatest cinematic villains in Feathers McGraw, a rolling pin/gun joke that is one of the best visual gags in cinema history, and a train sequence that has gone unmatched (sorry, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning). In the age where sequels to masterpieces have become so common, it’s fair to say that the new film has a lot to live up to. Thankfully, it does, although, It doesn’t quite match the levels of its predecessor.

Now, to insinuate Vengeance Most Fowl is somehow a ‘lesser quality’ from the entertaining catalogue of Wallace & Gromit films is like proclaiming (with chest) that pigs can fly! No. Vengeance is funny as hell with the type of humour that’s cinematically on brand for Nick Park and the Bristol-based Aardman team. It’s the small details that matter, and when it can give us a Blofeld-inspired Feathers McGraw stroking a white baby seal to Bondian levels in his incarcerated home, you have to prepare yourself for a comical ride.

Picking up from The Wrong Trousers, Feathers McGraw plans his revenge from his “high security institution” (aka the zoo) for stealing the treasured blue diamond. Whilst doing pull-ups (along with some Cape Fear-inspired music by composer Lorne Balfe), Wallace’s dependency on his technological inventions remains as strong as ever at 62 West Wallaby Street. In helping Gromit with his gardening project, Wallace invents a Siri-like, smart Gnome called Norbot (creepily voiced by Reece Shearsmith). After reshaping the garden (thanks to watching every episode of DIY Garden Squad), the gnome becomes the talk of the town, with Wallace using the gnome’s services (aka the smartly titled Gnome Improvement) to pay off his bills and debts. But soon enough, Norbot starts to develop a mind of its own.

Park and Mark Burton’s script has a lot of fun when it comes to tapping into our technological anxieties. There’s something wonderfully old school in what Aardman continues to champion. With AI popping up in every corner of our social lives, their work remains a breath of fresh air. With the exception of their CGI efforts with Flushed Away (still a great film despite missing Aardman’s traditional charm), stop-motion animation is king, an art perfected since A Grand Day Out. In Vengeance Most Fowl, the claymation models feel more refined and smoother, handcrafted with love, patience and care over the years where you can tell when an animator has left their mark, particularly with its Mission: Impossible-inspired third act. Park’s film sticks its landing every time, knowing the formula works.

The script also has another technological metaphor up its sleeve. Culturally aware of the ever-shifting tide, Park and Burton pour those ‘winds of change’ into Wallace. The madcap inventor who has done everything from building a rocket to creating a bakery in his home (one can only imagine what his insurance premiums and self-assessment returns look like) is an example of a character who has evolved with the times, with every contraption getting bigger and more extravagant with every short film. But Park and Burton are also willing to have a conversation about how much is too much when it comes to our technological addictions and obsessions. Something like Wallace’s dependable teapot has been relegated to the top shelf to gather dust, and comically forgetting how to use it when challenged.

But there’s a genuine fear of being left behind and made to feel obsolete, a fact reflected in every Gromit articulated gesture. Gromit is unmistakably all of us. The silent dog – always the smartest in the room – has always been the undisputed hero of these films. His suspicions about Norbot, Feather McGraw’s comeback reveal and the police’s criminal investigation in Wallace after Norbot gets the idea to replicate himself and causes chaos in town, play a big part in why Park’s film works so well. As the opposite to Wallace, the poor mutt is fighting harder than ever to feel love from his owner.

It’s not as bombastic as The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, however, Park gives his film all the cinematic attributes you could wish for with its gag-filled setups, explosions, suspense and epic chases involving canal boats. Yet it’s not every day when Aardman goes for broke by leaning into the territory of horror. Sure, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was a kid-friendly parody of werewolf transformation movies, but this Black Mirror/Inside No. 9 tribute is unexpected in a good way. From Norbot’s dark eyes and voice (like a sleep-paralysis demon in charging mode) and hackable prime directives, the script gently nods its cinephile hat to M3GAN and every other evil robot in the cinematic market. The bot may feel slightly scary for young kids, but thankfully, there’s enough levity in between to starve off nightmares, hopefully!

While Vengeance relies on familiar callbacks and cameos, it confidently strides its own path. Feathers is still a badass foe for Gromit. In one scene, there’s a touch of Tony Stark, building a wooden contraption out of recycled scraps (channel your inner Obadiah Stane from Iron Man here) to get past the zoo guard’s computer and hack into Wallace’s top-secret computer – and yes, Wallace’s password is exactly what you think it is. When his plan hits full flow, he ups the playful ante that really does beg for more. While Ben Whitehead can never fully replace Peter Sallis’s voicework, he steps into Wallace’s shoes and makes him his own, and you’ll never get a better line reading this year than “Butter Me Crumpets”. 

The film’s only weak point perhaps is its diversion to the police with Chief Inspector Mackintosh (Peter Kay) planning his retirement (although that is hilarious since Wallace and Gromit haven’t aged a day since 1989!). It takes away from how tightly written these adventures have been in the past with The Wrong Trousers doing more in 30 minutes than most films can handle. But in keeping in tune with its on-point visual humour, Kay and Lauren Patel’s PC Mukherjee add the ‘keystone cops’ energy to Park’s film.

In what has been another standout year for animation, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is a delightful visual treat, a cracking good time with plenty of laughter and joy from our claymation heroes. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait too long for another adventure.