For as revered a British filmmaking institution as it is, there isn’t actually that much Wallace & Gromit. Three and a half decades have given us four TV shorts, a feature length movie, and a handful of bite-sized short films. But what has made it endure, beyond its quality, is Aardman’s ability to make each return to West Wallaby Street and its beloved inhabitants fresh and impactful—a series where major characters and stories exist for one tale, and then are moved on from. So there was a lot riding when Aardman announced it was teaming up with Netflix for the first new Wallace & Gromit film since 2008’s A Matter of Loaf and Death, and that that film would see the series break tradition and bring back an iconic foe. It’s a challenge that Vengeance Most Fowl is constantly reckoning with—and one it only ever partially overcomes.
Out early next year on Netflix, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl picks up with the beloved titular duo in a familiar bind. Wallace (Ben Whitehead, replacing the dearly missed Peter Sallis) is trying to balance a pile of impending bills and his obsession with invention, hoping he can gadget his way out of the problem—leaving his loyal canine increasingly miffed about his master’s fixation with technology over the friend he has right next to him. So when those frustrations run headfirst into each other when Wallace unveils his latest money-making invention, Norbot the robotic garden gnome (a delightfully creepy performance by Reece Shearsmith), Gromit finds himself feeling more isolated than ever… until a spate of gnome-related burglaries across the neighborhood frame Wallace for crimes he didn’t commit, and the revelation that someone else is pulling their proverbial strings. That is, of course, none other than one of the all-time great villains of animation history, making an unprecedented return for the first time since 1993’s The Wrong Trousers: Penguin-Slash-Chicken-Slash-Renowned-Jewel-Thief, Feathers McGraw.
It is on this return that Vengeance Most Fowl hangs all of its biggest successes and its toughest struggles. In between the gag-a-minute laughs (whether it’s physical comedy farces, blink-and-you’ll-miss sight gags, or pun names aplenty that ooze with Aardman’s trademark British charms), the moments where Vengeance wants to reckon with that it actually means to acknowledge Wallace & Gromit‘s past, both narratively and thematically, are some of its best. It’s especially brave for a series that hasn’t had a major entry in over 15 years, and draws on the theme of the franchise wanting to do something new with each story—even when the doing something new is, ironically, revisiting its past. Combining this with the film’s brilliant ability to emphasize scope while still retaining the hand-crafted aesthetic that has let Wallace & Gromit endure all these years, and there are flashes of a movie that could’ve had it all: a love letter to Wallace & Gromit‘s long history, weaved into a story that truly felt like it was all these years in the making.
Alas, those moments are flashes. Vengeance Most Fowl indeed remains gorgeous to look at throughout (rewarding eagle-eyed viewers who love Aardman’s sense of detail with even more gags layered in each and every one of its setpieces), and is frequently uproariously funny, but far too frequently are those high points undercut by a current of all-too-knowing familiarity. Set pieces start to feel less unique when they become homages to action moments and chase sequences from Wallace & Gromit‘s past. Feathers’ return isn’t really about the titular vengeance, but simply another extended plan to try and nab the blue diamond Wallace and Gromit stopped him from stealing all those years ago. Even specific shots and lines of dialogue from past films are invoked here, and less in a way that make dramatic sense for this new story, but instead a way to nudge familiar viewers and go “remember that bit, from that one? It was good then, right?”
The elements of the film that are the most fresh—most notably in how Vengeance uses Wallace and his retro-analogue gadgeteering style to comment on our modern obsession with technology and “smart” devices, playing as it does in a fantasy world where otherwise the internet barely exists and no one seems to own a mobile phone—find themselves pushed aside once Feathers really enters the picture to focus on his return. But Vengeance Most Fowl chooses to not comment on that return and its impact in favor of simply doing the things you would expect from such a return: new locales and new scale, but setpieces and moments that feel like little more than homage to ideas that come before. For a series that has prided itself on always re-inventing and doing new things, with new characters, it feels like a wild shame to miss the mark like this.
For new audiences coming to Netflix without that familiarity with the franchise however, that almost-ceaseless sense of riffing on the series’ past will have much less of an impact. It’s a greatest hits celebration of Wallace & Gromit, but if you don’t know what those hits are, they still land with a ton of humor and charm this time around. After all, given the amount of time since Wallace & Gromit last hit screens there’s been time for generations of fans to grow up and raise further generations to come to the series. On a broad level, Vengeance Most Fowl succeeds as a sumptuous and earnest love letter to everything that has made Wallace & Gromit an institution, in both its home nation and across the world. But part of the biggest joy of Wallace & Gromit has always been in the little details—and when you really look closely beyond that charming exterior, Vengeance Most Fowl doesn’t pass the sniff test compared to Wallace & Gromit‘s prior additions to the proverbial cheeseboard.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl begins streaming worldwide on Netflix starting January 3, 2025. The movie will stream on the BBC in the UK and Ireland at a currently undisclosed date.
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