WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL

The return of evil penguin Feathers McGraw is a reason to rejoice in Vengeance Most Fowl but while the film amply entertains, it isn’t quite up there with the best of Wallace and Gromit.

Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader, Michael Myers … there’s no lack of classic movie villains I love, but none of them I have missed as much as Feathers McGraw, the dastardly antagonist of seminal claymation short The Wrong Trousers. Three decades after his first and only appearance the resentful penguin finally returns in Vengeance Most Fowl, and whenever he is on screen this Wallace and Gromit adventure is as good as ever. Alas, for much of the runtime McGraw isn’t on screen at all.

That’s because a huge chunk of Vengeance Most Fowl centres around Wallace’s latest goofy invention, a ‘smartgnome’ named Norbot, who quickly takes over Gromit’s tasks – and those of the whole neighbourhood – much to the pooch’s chagrin. When a certain penguin manages to hack into Norbot’s mainframe and alters his settings to evil, the town and the police force descend on Wallace, and Gromit has to scramble to save his owner jail time.

While the Norbot sequences have their charm and are sprinkled with the customary Aardman puns and wit, they also are quite repetitive and miss a clear focus. Even more worryingly, they lack tempo and cinematic ambition, which always were director Nick Park’s main assets. Because of this, there is always something curiously off about Vengeance Most Fowl, which to me might rank well above A Grand Day Out, but still some way below the other Wallace and Gromit adventures.

Another reason why the picture doesn’t soar quite as high, is because the emotional bond between Wallace and Gromit gets short shrift. Sure, Gromit is threatened by the artificial intelligence of Norbot, but this never drives a true wedge between him and Wallace, thus robbing the film from the profound emotion that make some of the previous films in the series stand out.

Luckily most of my qualms about the movie evaporate in the third act, when Feather McGraw steps out of the shadows like a true Bond villain, stroking a seal instead of a cat and making use of a high-tech submarine. From hereon in Vengeance Most Fowl becomes the film I had hoped it would be, with jaw-dropping action sequences, humour in spades and a markedly higher tempo. By going out on a high like that, I’ll happily look past the picture’s flaws and can wholeheartedly recommend it to Wallace and Gromit fans old and new.

release: 2024

director: Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham

starring: Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith