Forget Tom Cruise riding his motorbike off a cliff in Mission: Impossible. Wallace and Gromit are on a comfy narrowboat teetering on the edge of the Pontcysyllte aqueduct, having defiantly chucked a bunch of boots at the villain … weapons which, gloriously, have the sole purpose of facilitating a gag about something getting “rebooted”. Nick Park’s immortal creations return in the first Wallace and Gromit adventure for 16 years, a stop-motion animated sequel to the 1993 Oscar-winning short The Wrong Trousers. It’s exciting, ingenious, funny and an unmissable Christmas treat.
Our human and canine heroes are, as ever, inventors, cheese enthusiasts and warriors in the cause of righteousness and their new confrontation with wickedness involves references to Eric Morecambe, Buster Keaton and the Flintstones – but also to Virginia Woolf and John Milton. So as well as everything else, Wallace and Gromit are doing their bit to keep English literature alive in UK universities. As we join the story, Wallace has invented a new “smart” Gnome-robot, or Norbot (unsettlingly voiced by Reece Shearsmith) which helps around the house and garden. Wallace becomes increasingly infatuated with his new robo-helpmate and Gromit’s feelings are hurt.
This bromantic crisis is complicated by the return of their dastardly enemy, psychopathic penguin Feathers McGraw, thirsting for payback (only a pedant would complain that penguins aren’t “fowl” as such). With his hilariously blank face, unmoving even as he cricks his neck like Steven Seagal, or does macho-bad-guy pull-ups, Feathers (who was imprisoned in the city zoo at the end of The Wrong Trousers for attempting to make free with Wallace’s auto-controlled slacks), now devises a reprehensible plan to hack into the Norbot and use it to mobilise a battalion of other Norbots to steal the blue diamond which escaped his clutches the first time.
Ben Whitehead voices Wallace, his performance an affectionate homage to the late Peter Sallis who originally played the role; Peter Kay returns as blustering copper Inspector Mackintosh; Lauren Patel is junior officer PC Mukherjee; and Diane Morgan is local TV news journalist Onya Doorstep. She reports for a show called Up North News and the name of the presenter is one of the film’s most outrageous gags.
Wallace and Gromit have also come up against the AI issue; as Wallace says thoughtfully: “Tech … that’s the thing. As long as it knows who’s boss.” The misappropriation of the Norbot feels like much more of a live issue than that of Wallace’s trousers 30 years ago, although come to think of it, the Norbot (who has been rashly fitted with an “evil” setting – what was Wallace thinking?) has the unsettlingly bland voice of Kubrick’s HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The problem is pretty much timeless, as is the comedy of Wallace and Gromit: cheeky, inventive and endearing.
• Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is in UK and Irish cinemas from 18 December, on BBC One on Christmas Day, and on Netflix outside the UK from 3 January. It screens in Australian cinemas from 19 December.
