Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl Review

Boxing Day 1993. There was only one thing worth watching on the telly. A half hour animation on BBC2 at tea time started a national love affair with a bald cheese-loving inventor and his silent but all-knowing dog. The Wrong Trousers wasn’t the first outing for Wallace and Gromit – A Grand Day Out, released four years previously and made by Nick Park as his graduation project had been Oscar nominated – but this was on a different level. A budget of £650,000 allowed Park and his animators to let their imaginations run riot and a universal favourite was born.

There was, of course, a third unforgettable character, an unflappable villain who we all loved to hate. Banged up after the film’s stroke of genius, that chase on a model railway, Feathers McGraw was just too good – and too evil – to remain behind bars. Surely he would return ….. We all know the answer. He has, and he’s out to settle his score with our plasticine heroes in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, which can’t fail to be the terrestrial TV hit of Christmas 2024. In the intervening years, Wallace has at last invented something that actually works – jolly robots to do all those odd jobs around the house and garden – and when Feathers stages a jailbreak and goes diamond-napping again, he realises he can use them to frame his old enemies.

The film knows it has the hardest of acts to follow: the opening credits essentially reproduce those from The Wrong Trousers, so the original is never far away. And everything that makes this stop-motion series such a national treasure is still there. The puns come thick and fast – Feathers has been “doing bird”, references to “gnome improvements” and a presenter called Anton Deck on local TV news – the storyline has a comforting familiarity with the Claymation duo finding themselves short of money and the inevitable exclamation when Wallace (now voiced by Ben Whitehead) discovers the true identity of a certain “chicken”. All together now ….. More touchingly, there’s also the prospect of the faithful brains of the outfit, Gromit, being replaced yet again, this time by Norbot the robot (voiced by Reece Shearsmith).

The big difference this time round, however, is the running time. While the original was on our screens for just half an hour, this film lasts an hour and 20 minutes long. It’s a challenge, both for the animators and the makers as a whole, and there are times when it sags just slightly under the pressure. The story is a touch stretched to fit that extra time, but the creativity and invention pretty much remains intact, so for the millions who love Park’s glorious and eccentrically British creations, the result is still pure, unadulterated joy, and the biggest of Christmas hugs.

The intrepid duo from West Wallaby Street come from a time when everybody crowded round the TV on Christmas Day to watch one particular show – for years, it was Morecambe And Wise. And that tradition could find itself revived again, courtesy of this delightful animation, with a style all of its own and a nefarious penguin. Dare we say it? It’s cracking!

★★★★

In selected cinemas now, BBC1 on Christmas Day at 6.10pm and afterwards on BBC iPlayer and on Netflix January 3rd (excluding the UK) / The voices of Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith, Diane Morgan / Dirs: Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham / BBC, Netflix / U