Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Ever since the release of A Matter of Loaf and Death in 2008, the Wallace & Gromit franchise has been all but dormant outside the UK, not helped by Peter Sallis’ retirement in 2010 and passing in 2017, with the Shaun the Sheep spin-off series helping to keep it alive in the interim. To this end, I was surprised and excited when not only was a new feature film, Vengeance Most Fowl, announced to be in the works, but that it was also a follow-up to the 1993 short film The Wrong Trousers, which happens to be my favorite entry. The announcement of Netflix being the distributor was a bit of a spirit breaker, as I do not have a Netflix account, however as the film got closer to release, a series of limited US theatrical screenings came up, with the only local option I had being a one-day showing at an IPIC theater (the same one where I first watched Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions under similar circumstances). After leaping at the chance, I found the wait and effort to have been well worth it, even if it doesn’t quite live up to the original.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

Following their collaboration with DreamWorks that ended with Flushed Away, Aardman began a new partnership with Sony that began with Arthur Christmas. Whereas their previous two films were done in CG, their next feature, and their final feature collab with an American studio, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (The Pirates!), would see them return to stop-motion in adapting the book of the same name by Gideon DeFoe, who also wrote the screenplay in a rare case of the author also writing the adaptation. Although I had seen an international cut of the movie before, I had at one point become curious about seeing the original British versions of some films that were edited for America, with The Pirates! being one of them, and so imported a UK Blu-ray of the film. While the movie as I saw it originally was already good, I can safely say that it’s even better seeing it as originally intended.

Shaun the Sheep Movie

One of Aaardman’s best-known works is the popular Wallace & Gromit franchise, which endures to this day. Notably, the third installment in the series, A Close Shave, introduced audiences to the character of Shaun the sheep, who would become popular enough to warrant his own spin-off series, the appropriately-titled Shaun the Sheep, which itself would warrant its own spin-off known as Timmy Time. The popularity of the Shaun the Sheep series would eventually warrant its own theatrical film, Shaun the Sheep Movie. While I’ve only seen a handful of Shaun the Sheep episodes and liked what I saw, my interest in the film came from already being a Wallace & Gromit fan, and after watching the film on home video, I enjoyed every moment of it.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Note: This review contains spoilers for Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Following Nick Park’s completion of A Grand Day Out in 1989 as a student short film while working at Aardman Animations, its popularity upon release spawned the Wallace & Gromit franchise, with two additional short films, The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995), to follow. As part of a multi-picture deal between Aardman and DreamWorks Animation that included 2000’s Chicken Run, a feature-length Wallace & Gromit movie, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, was released in 2005. However, a number of misguided attempts by DreamWorks Animation to make the movie sell better in America led to Aardman cutting the deal short after the release of Flushed Away in 2006. As a fan of the original Wallace & Gromit shorts since childhood, I was excited to see The Curse of the Were-Rabbit when it first came out, though in both the theater and on home video I, along with my family, had a bit of a mixed reaction to it. A little over 15 years later, we decided to revisit the movie in the spirit of the Halloween season and, while it turned out to be far better than we remembered, it still felt like a part of the series’ British charm was missing.

Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures

Note: This review contains spoilers for Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures.

As a follow-up to Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People (aka SBCG4AP) and to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the Wallace & Gromit franchise in 2009, Telltale Games developed the episodic game Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures. Though I wanted to play this game after I learned about it sometime after release, I will admit that actually getting to play it was not the smoothest experience. Though I bought the series through Telltale’s website, I don’t remember actually receiving the digital or physical game, however I’m not sure how much of it was it being around when they lost the rights to the IP. I then bought the physical collection off of Amazon a few years back, however rather than the US Telltale release I somehow ended up with the two-part UK Mastertronic version instead, which while technically correct was not what I expected (I kept the game anyway because I was just happy to own it), and while it is still playable on Windows 10, the game doesn’t like it when I have both discs installed at the same time.

While I have played the game in full before and liked it, especially Episode 3, I decided to take another look at it after replaying SBCG4AP to see if my opinion held up. After what is my second complete playthrough, I thought it was still good despite some technical issues.

Early Man

Aardman Animation, perhaps best known for their series of Wallace and Gromit shorts by Nick Park, is a studio unique for persisting in the Claymation style of stop-motion animation, particularly featuring plasticine characters. Though their main output consists of animated shorts, they have produced a handful of feature films, including, but not limited to, Chicken Run (2000), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), Arthur Christmas (2011) and Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015). Though I had enjoyed many of their films in the past, I didn’t know how to feel about their most recent release, Early Man, based on previews. With theatrical showings rapidly dwindling, however, I went to see it while I still had the chance. Having finally seen it, I now better understand why audiences weren’t really flocking to it.

In prehistoric Earth, an asteroid impacts the surface and wipes out the dinosaurs, but spares a nearby tribe of cavemen, who invent soccer (consistently called football throughout the film) while kicking a ball-shaped chunk of the asteroid. Fast forward to the Stone Age and this same tribe now hunts rabbits in the valley for survival. One of the cavemen, Dug (Eddie Redmayne), wants to hunt mammoths instead, but Chief Bobnar (Timothy Spall) insists otherwise. Later, a Bronze Age army led by Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston) drives the caveman out of the valley and into the nearby badlands. Dug seeks revenge, but unknowingly triggers a sequence of events which leads to him challenging Nooth’s best soccer team to a match with his tribe’s future on the line.

What unfolds is more or less the plot to a typical underdog sports movie. If you’re familiar at all with how that sort of movie works, then you have an idea of what to expect. The way Early Man executes this type of plot is entertaining, since it also injects a little Stone Age flavor and has some clever laugh-out-loud moments. However, it doesn’t leave a huge impact one way or another, just kind of somewhere in the middle. That said, the voice acting is pretty good overall, especially from Eddie Redmayne as Dug and Tom Hiddleston as Lord Nooth, the latter of whom plays a much sillier kind of villain than in the Marvel Studios films.

As with Aardman’s other features, the animation is a definite strong suit. The animation helps to capture the scale of each moment, including the crowd scenes that were undeniably difficult to animate in stop-motion and at least one moment where a giant prehistoric duck becomes larger as it enters the foreground. Animating a sport in stop-motion convincingly is also an achievement in and of itself. Notably, two dinosaurs, a Ceratosaurus and a Triceratops, at the very beginning of the movie are also animated in the style of the late Ray Harryhausen, a highly influential stop-motion animator.

Early Man is a good film, but not one of Aardman’s best. The clever writing and great animation don’t do enough to mask the predictable plot. It’s entertaining, but it’s obvious why it underperformed. Aardman fans are sure to find enjoyment in it, as would hardcore animation fans. As for everyone else, use your own judgment.

Arthur Christmas - Naughty or Nice?

Aardman Animations, Ltd., is a highly respected animation studio known especially for their stop-motion work. Their most well-known IP has got to be Wallace & Gromit, having spawned a series of short films, a spin-off television series (surprisingly with it's own spin-off), and a theatrical movie released a few years back. Recently the company has entered the realm of computer animation, their first venture being Flushed Away in 2006, which I didn't like very well. Their latest film and the subject of this review, Arthur Christmas, is also made in computer generation, but is also a holiday film and a pretty decent one at that.

After a spectacularly awful Justin Bieber music video (explaining exactly why would turn this review into a rant), we are treated to a visual explanation as to how Santa Claus is able to traverse the entire world in a single night: elves travel down from a giant, high-tech, sleigh-shaped ship and do practically everything that Santa is known to do on Christmas night. They are led by the current Santa's son, Steve (Hugh Laurie), who keeps everything running efficiently to ensure everything goes off without a hitch. Meanwhile his brother, Arthur (James McAvoy), is tasked with answering every letter addressed to the man in the red suit, enthusiastically stating that he (Santa) will definitely be on his way. By the end of the mission, all seems well until it's discovered later that one child in England was accidentally skipped. Upon learning this, Arthur, who is always filled with Christmas spirit, sets on a mission himself to deliver the present with only two hours until morning.

What's interesting about this movie is the approach it takes to interpret how the legend of Santa Claus works. Here it's explained that the jolly Christmas icon has been around forever because it's a family by the last name Claus and every so often one of them retires to pass the torch unto a new Santa, treated more as a title than a name, which is actually pretty clever. The roles of the elves, especially the ones that perform in the field, are similar to how it's shown in Disney's Prep and Landing, but on a much grander scale, and there is also an acceptable explanation as to how reindeer can fly: magic dust.

The characters of this movie are interesting to watch, especially in the ways their personalities bounce off each other and how the family of Santas doesn't get along that well, particularly between the current Santa (Jim Broadbent); Steve, who is to be the next Santa; and Grandsanta (Bill Nighy), the previous Santa who brags about how he got things done without modern technology. One elf of note is Bryony (Ashley Jensen), who can wrap any gift very quickly with very minimal tape (and still have time for a bow). The family tension leads to some drama during the course of the movie, though some of Bryony and Grandsanta's dialogue provide a few laughs to prevent the movie from becoming too serious.

The animation of this movie is simply stunning, especially in terms of the hair on each character. Everything is very fluid and helps to display an array of body language that enhances the emotions each character feels. Comparing the animation to Flushed Away, since it was also done in CG, the look and fluidity are both greatly improved here, since they didn't try to make it appear to be stop-motion when it wasn't. The music, Bieber aside, really helps to set the atmosphere and tone of the story and make it feel even more like an enjoyable Christmas flick.

Arthur Christmas is a movie I would recommend, especially to fans of whatever Aardman puts out or anyone looking for a good Christmas story this holiday, since it hits all the right points. However, if you are not a fan of Justin Bieber, whose song sandwiches the story, this may scare you away from seeing it again right away. Regardless, it's definitely worth a look.

To read reviews of other Christmas films, please see our Christmas Review Hub.