(courtesy IMP Awards)
It’s a rare thing in this hyperconnected, digitally frenzied age where something is demanded of you almost every second of every day to just sit back, switch off and spend some time with old friends.
And when that happens, when the gods smile upon you with an uncomplicated moment in time like this, then surely the twosome you want to spend it with are Wallace & Gromit, creations of Aardman Creations’ Nick Park, who first made our frenzied days back in 1989 in Grand Day Out.
Returning with Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, their first big screen outing since The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005, our favourite Yorkshire residents are once again bathed in the dubiously warm glow of Wallace’s techno gadgets.
In this sequel to 1993’s The Wrong Trousers, Wallace (Ben Whitehead) is, if it is possible, even more proud of his inventions, with his retro machinery doing everything from getting him and Gromit out of bed to getting Wallace ready for the day and even acrobatically slapping toast, mid-air, onto his toast.
All Wallace can see are upsides – though you have to wonder if his neighbours are as enamoured of the way he arrives, naked as the day he was claymationally born (don’t worry it’s all gloriously G-rated), to where he gets dressed – but Gromit, once again suffering in ways his master never really notices, and in the case of breakfast, covered in all the jam that doesn’t make it onto the toast, is all too aware that there are great deficiencies to Wallace’s enduring and growing love affair with his technological “prowess”.
Wallace’s entrenched inability to see any downsides at all to his techno-saturation of the duo’s otherwise cosy domestic existence is key to Vengeance Most Fowl which offers some sage and highly amusing ideas on whether technology, for all its benefits, may have gone too far.
Exhibit A is Wallace’s latest gift to the world, Norbot, a blinking, algorithmically-obsessed robot who is initially created as a helper for Gromit in his garden where he spends soothing hours tending bushes and flowers, lawn and trees in an idyll that the poor fellow needs when inside the house it all technology all the time.
What to Gromit is a soothing paradisical escape is to sweetly clueless Wallace a burden that must be rectified and hence Norbot is created to take away the perceived burden of having to endlessly garden.
As you might expect from an Aardman film what starts as an uncomplicated fun idea (well for Wallace; not so much Gromit) ends up becoming anything but in Vengeance Most Fowl which see Feathers McGraw, the nefarious penguin diamond thief from The Wrong Trousers who uses a red rubber glove to disguise himself as a chicken, return to wreak, well, vengeance of course, upon Wallace and Gromit who stymied his plans for criminal glory and who placed as an inmate in a zoo.
Seething as an exhibit at the zoo, Feathers has never settled into “prison” life well – there is so much Shawshank Redemption/Cape Fear-ness to the zoo sequences and you will giggle at the gym exercising, shaving and the way in which the zookeepers treat their charge – and all he wants is to enact his plan to punish Wallace & Gromit and no doubt get the diamond back into his conniving hands, er, flippers.
How he does that is pure evil genius, reprogramming Norbot into something evil – it’s a simple matter of scrolling down a personality trait matrix which he does remotely in a way that is hilariously low-tech but criminally brilliant – and making him the instrument of his vengeance.
This piece of devilishly clever reprogramming unleashes a manic world of hurt for the titular twosome and Vengeance Most Fowl quickly goes from Wallace glorying in his inventive cleverness and Gromit sighing as frequent collateral damage to a manic adventure through terrible deeds, great bravery and justice being done, largely, as usual, at Gromit’s determinedly capable hands.
It is the sweetest, most charming, soul affirming ride of your early 2025 life, and as Gromit goes all out to save his and Wallace’s reputations, livelihoods and to stoop evil most fowl triumphing, we are treated to quite possibly the most hilarious chase scene in any film courtesy of canal boats, inventive use of wellies and even a homage to James Bond films and possibly even Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.
Quite apart from the plot which is slight in a sense but beautifully and perfectly executed and sustained well through the film, Vengeance Most Fowl benefits from its attention to characters, obviously in the form of its leading twosome but also in supporting characters like soon-to-retire Chief Inspector Albert Mackintosh (Peter Kay), returning from Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, his newly arrived, fresh-from-college trainee PC Mukherjee (Lauren Patel) who cannot wait to catch bad guys, and even cameo figures like news reporter Onya Doorstep (Diane Morgan) and even ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- the Farmer (John Sparkes) from Shaun the Sheep.
It is also gleefully packed with all kinds of delightful Easter eggs including nods to an iteration of Gromit from the early 1980s on the police noticeboard to A Grand Day Out involving, naturally enough, cheese, and some gorgeous visual flourishes such as the vinyl Gromit listens to and the books he reads and even the magazines that Chief Inspector Mackintosh reads which change, rather marvellously and plot perfectly throughout the film.
Attention to heart-stirring and comedically rich detail has always been a treasured hallmark of Aardman’s work and it’s no different in Vengeance Most Fowl with co-directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham going all out not only to deliver up sweetly charming visually and verbally rich company that delights and surprises at almost every turn, but also a story that amuses yes but makes you sigh with contentedness happiness to, not simply at the neatly wrapped-up ending where justice is rather amusingly served, be back with lovely old friends who, far from being past their prime, are in their very best form, much to our great and enduring delight.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl streams on Netflix.