‘Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’ Review: Netflix’s Aardman Pic

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Wallace, the scattered entrepreneurial protagonist created by the Oscar-winning animator Nick Park, has an invention for everything. The modest suburban home on Wallaby Street that Wallace shares with his expressive beagle, Gromit, is filled with Rube Goldberg-esque gizmos.

One machine, functioning as a kind of alarm, ejects Wallace out of bed and tosses him into a tunnel that leads right into a warm bath. Another gadget dresses the inventor, offering him variations of his signature sweater vest and brown slack combo. A third contraption slathers spoonfuls of jam on toasted bread, while yet another widget pats the dog. 

Still, these tools aren’t enough for Wallace, whose chronic need to optimize his life rivals the obsessiveness of the most ardent Silicon Valley technocrats. At the beginning of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the machine architect, eager to sell the benefits of technology to Gromit, creates a robotic garden gnome programmed to lend the reserved pooch a helping hand. The chaotic results are sleekly rendered by co-directors Park and Merlin Crossingham.

Premiering at AFI Fest ahead of its debut on Netflix in January, Vengeance Most Fowl builds on the detailed claymation technique and slapstick humor that have earned Wallace and Gromit their enduring reputation. The beloved duo made history when their 2005 big screen debut, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, became the first stop-motion animated picture to win best animated feature at the Academy Awards. While the style enjoys more widespread popularity today (note recent Oscar nods for the endearing Marcel the Shell with the Shoes On and Guillermo del Toro’s brooding rendition of Pinocchio), it wasn’t always so commercially sexy. The Wallace & Gromit franchise, created by Park in the late ’80s, occupies a special place as both a vestige of the craft’s past and evidence of its enduring present and future.

It’s a shame that Vengeance Most Fowl is getting only a limited theatrical release. The pair’s second feature flaunts a broader canvas that would have benefitted from the scale of a cinema screen. Wallace and Gromit, with their wide smiles and active eyebrows, are rendered in greater detail by Aardman Animation (Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget), and the smoothness of their movements, as well as the diversity of textures, reflect stop-motion animation’s own technological advancements. Take Wallace’s clothes, now made of real yarn instead of clay. Or Gromit’s ears, which, while still made of the Lewis Newplast (that now-famous Plasticine), appear more polished.

There are other changes, too, some more expected than others. Wallace is now voiced by Ben Whitehead, who inherited the role after Peter Sallis’ death in 2017. Whitehead hold his own with a Wallace who’s less meek and muttering, though he still gets himself and Gromit into wacky situations. When he sits down for breakfast, commenting on the “cracking” toast, the difference is noticeable but slight. A more pronounced update is in the jokes, some of which are less bawdy and more attuned to the humor of a younger audience.

Mark Burton’s script marks the return of one of Wallace and Gromit’s old enemies, Feathers McGraw. As fans of the duo will remember (and as Vengeance Most Fowl establishes with an efficient introduction), the wily penguin first appeared in the 1993 short The Wrong Trousers, in which he uses Wallace’s recent invention to steal a precious blue diamond. After the bird’s plan fails, thanks to Gromit, he ends up imprisoned at a local zoo. Like any good villain, he’s been plotting his revenge on the zealous inventor and his loyal canine ever since.

While McGraw stews behind bars, Wallace waxes poetic about his latest invention, Norbot, a “smart” gnome created to help Gromit with the garden. But the beagle, who enjoys the labor of trimming his own hedges, finds the automaton’s quest for efficiency deeply off-putting — a commentary, perhaps, on how we should all be warier of unfettered technological advancement.

Norbot (voiced by Reece Shearsmith) nevertheless turns out to be a hit in the neighborhood, and Wallace, plagued by a stack of overdue bills, is inspired to pursue a new business venture. It makes him a local hero, even getting him an interview with news anchor Onya Doorstep (Diane Morgan).

Until, that is, McGraw interferes. The silent villain cleverly tampers with Norbot to turn it against Wallace and Gromit. The robot then duplicates himself and goes on a burglary spree throughout the community, prompting Chief Inspector Mackintosh (Peter Kay) and his new lieutenant P.C. Mukherjee (Lauren Patel) to get involved.

A haywire adventure, heightened by Lorne Balfe and Julian Nott’s suspenseful score, ensues, in which the police investigate Wallace while Gromit tries to prove his innocence.

Running just 79 minutes, Vengeance Most Fowl is a brisk and well-paced escapade, in which Gromit proves himself to still be one of our best screen actors and Wallace’s absentminded behavior still endears. A gallery of supporting characters — from neighbors scandalized by theft to the journalists and the police — not only add to the usual fun but also offer some of the film’s more cutting jokes and social commentary.

Those roasted include the suburban fixation on uniformity, the capriciousness of the media and the negligence and all-around laziness of law enforcement. If, as with the first Wallace & Gromit film, the story is a little predictable, that doesn’t make the journey any less enjoyable.