KSL Movie Show review: ‘Wallace & Gromit’ is a palate cleanse in a sea of gritty film
Jan 3, 2025, 8:58 AM
Just like a meal palate cleanser, Wallace & Gromit is a palate cleanse after all the gritty films that have come out recently.
Editor’s note: This is an editorial piece. An editorial, like a news article, is based on fact but also shares opinions. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and are not associated with our newsroom.
SALT LAKE CITY — Just like a meal palate cleanser, sometimes you just need a movie to say, “Hey, how about a reset? Couldn’t you use one after this steady diet of tough, gritty films you’ve been torturing yourself with, to untwist those knots in your stomach and that has you feeling guilty about your cushy little life?” Yes?
Well say hello again to a new Wallace & Gromit adventure!
And why is this such a big deal? Because, it’s been 19 years since the last full-length feature “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” which just happened to have won an Academy Award. Why so long between features? Creator Nick Park was not sold on spending another five years in Aardman Animation Studios on another W&G project. Yes, stop-motion animation requires the patience of nurturing an oak tree while everyone else around you is planting bamboo (key: slowish to fastest).
In recent years, Wallace & Gromit have become famous for solving the caper of the attempted robbery of the “Blue Diamond.” The culprit – the diabolical silent penguin, known as Feathers McGraw, who has been cooling his webbed, clawed feet in prison preparing for the day when he can bust out, get his Blue Diamond and eliminate Wallace & Gromit.
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Meanwhile, good-natured, bad inventor Wallace (voiced by Ben Whitehead) has been working on a “smart gnome” in hopes that it can handle the tasks of housekeeping and yard maintenance. If successful, he hopes to make more so he can rent them out to customers in need of the same services. And despite his dog Gromit’s suspicions, mostly based on Wallace’s numerous and previous failures, it appears the smart gnomes are actually working as advertised.
That is right up until the OG McGraw manages to hack into the control server and change the gnomes’ settings from “good” to “evil.” Uh, how unfortunate. So not only does the feathery fiend take control of the now evil gnomes, he manages to clone a bunch more creating a crime wave across the city.
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And of course all of the plasticine fingers are pointed directly at Wallace – and Gromit by association.
Sidenote: There was a rumor going around that Aardman Animation was running out of the special Plasticine clay it desperately needs for production. Indeed, the company that produced it did go out of business last summer, but Aardman managed to buy up all of the remaining stock and has been working on their own clay product since then. Sorry, Playdough, golden ticket gone, but for Aardman, tragedy averted.
My last thought on this new W&G movie, which is action-packed and hilarious through and through, is try to imagine shooting a big, expansive movie like this where each character has to be moved 12 times per second (Aardman’s technique is to capture each image twice to reach the film speed of 24 frames per second). Sorry for that dip into the nerdary, but it blows my mind.
Would you have the patience for that? I know I wouldn’t, but I’m certainly glad Nick and his team are masters of their craft – and so they are again.
WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL (A-) Rated PG for some action and rude humor. Featuring the Wallace voice of Ben Whitehead, after the legendary Peter Sallis retired. Co-directed by Merlin Crossingham (“Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” “Morph”) and Nick Park (“Chicken Run” “Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers”) – filmed at Aardman Animation in Bristol, England. A NETFLIX exclusive. Running time: 79 minutes.
