Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)
Cheese, Gromit! And jam. And toast. And creepy garden gnomes named Norbot who dance like maniacs and trim hedges into creepy topiaries like Edward Scissorhands. Welcome to Aardman’s newest offering, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
It all seems to open like a typical Wallace and Gromit story, with a mondo Rube Goldberg machine of a wake-up routine. Wallace has never stopped inventing things. He’s got a machine that slaps various condiments on toast. He’s got a picture of he and Gromit that waves and talks to Gromit every morning. He’s even got a machine that will give Gromit head pats.
Gromit, of course, takes it all in stride, but his stoicism fades a bit when Norbot, Wallace’s Furby-like garden gnome turns Gromit’s traditional English garden into a modern topiary fest. Wallace is ecstatic because the bills have piled up and he has visions of an army of gnomes doing landscaping jobs for the people in the village. Gromit just wants to sleep at night without Norbot charging himself right next to the bed, and lugs Norbot down to the basement, where he plugs him into Wallace’s computer.
Meanwhile, hardened criminal Feathers McGraw languishes in his nearby prison cell at the Zoo, where he just happens to overhear a news story about Norbert. Ever the innovative fellow, Feathers hacks his way into Wallace’s computer, where he sees Norbot charging away.
Yep, the inevitable happens, but I’m not going to ruin anything. Suffice it to say, while Feathers has quite a few tricks up his sleeve, naturally he doesn’t count on our two heroes having an arsenal of their own. Or on the village’s new police officer, Mukherjee, who’s fresh out of the police academy and anxious to make good.
It feels like forever since we last visited with Wallace and Gromit, and this movie is absolutely adorable. It’s got lots of little plays on words (Gromit reads works by Virginia Woof and John Stilton, for example), and isn’t mean-spirited in the slightest, although it does have a very subtle touch of bathroom humor in one scene.
One of the nicest things about Wallace and Gromit is that there’s always such an air of innocence to them, but it’s innocence with bite. Wallace never loses his optimism even when things are at their worst, and Gromit is always there to temper Wallace’s prolific inventor’s mind. When that one machine squirts condiments on toast, for instance, Gromit puts on sunglasses and lifts his morning cup of tea out of the firing line.
Honestly, I don’t want to say too much about Vengeance Most Fowl because Wallace and Gromit need to speak for themselves. Everyone who sees them will notice different details and find different things to be delighted at, which is one of the reasons these characters have such staying power. My favorite short of theirs is still “A Grand Day Out,” but Vengeance Most Fowl does the Wallace and Gromit catalogue proud.
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is currently streaming on Netflix. Rated PG.
My grade: A+
Principal Cast: Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith, Diane Morgan, Adjoa Andoh, Muzz Khan, Lenny Henry, Victoria Elliott, John Sparkes, Jon Glover, Bethan Mary-James, Maya Sondhi, Tom Doggart, Richard Beek, Merlin Crossingham, David Holt, Lizzie Waterworth
Directed by Merlin Crossingham and Nick Park.
Written by Mark Burton and Nick Park.