The iconic duo return in another rollickingly amusing adventure as they must clear their name after being framed for crimes they didn’t commit, rendered in the tactile, almost corporeal stop-motion quality that Aardman has been reliably producing for decades.
Review #2,932
Dir. Nick Park & Merlin Crossingham
2024 | UK | Animation, Adventure, Comedy | 79min | 2.00:1 | English
PG (Netflix rating) for some action and rude humor
Cast: Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith, Diane Morgan
Plot: Top dog Gromit springs into action to save his master when Wallace’s high-tech invention goes rogue and he’s framed for a series of suspicious crimes.
Awards: Nom. for Best Animated Feature (Oscars)
Distributor: Netflix
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Light/Family – New Technology; BestBuds; Innocent Framed
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Mainstream
Viewed: Netflix
Spoilers: No
I can’t believe it has already been two decades since the last ‘Wallace & Gromit’ feature film. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, as it is called, won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in a year with Corpse Bride and Howl’s Moving Castle and gave its creator Nick Park his fourth Oscar.
We have to thank Netflix for making his latest W&G available worldwide. In an era saturated with content that is fighting for your attention, it is reassuring to go back to the basic comforts of Claymation that Aardman has been reliably producing for decades.
There is a tactile, almost corporeal quality to stop-motion animation that can never be replaced with digital or AI animation, and in Vengeance Most Fowl, we bear witness to some of Nick Park and co’s finest and most meticulous work captured frame by frame on camera.
Feathers McGraw, the penguin villain from the brilliant W&G short, The Wrong Trousers (1993), returns to create utter chaos for the man-and-dog duo.
“That’s just an innocent nun, out for a pleasure cruise.”
From valuable blue diamonds that must be kept safe and sound to AI gnomes invented by Wallace that go berserk, Vengeance Most Fowl gives us another rollickingly amusing adventure as the duo must clear their name when framed for a series of crimes.
While nothing would ever top that high-octane train chase sequence in The Wrong Trousers, there are lots to savour here in terms of set-pieces, including an exciting boat chase that leads to one of the most precarious climaxes in the W&G canon.
An enormous dose of fun for the whole family it may be, Vengeance Most Fowl should also interest grownups with its exploration of concerns related to unethical AI use, bringing the W&G brand into this new high-tech era.
As someone who plays and chats with my ‘sentient’ Snoopies every day (delusional companion syndrome, anyone?), I truly appreciate the W&G films—they are the closest representation of a self-fantasised world where dogs walk like humans and do human things.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 
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