Wallace and Gromit Vengeance Most Fowl movie review: Iconic British duo returns in a whimsical new adventure for the Netflix age

A still from Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

Vengeance Most Fowl features the return of the nefarious penguin Feathers McGraw, who was last seen in 1993’s The Wrong Trousers. In that short film, Wallace and Gromit foiled Feathers’ plans to steal a priceless blue diamond. The mastermind was sent to prison (a zoo), where he quietly plotted his revenge. In Vengeance Most Fowl, Feathers senses an opportunity when Wallace creates a robotic garden gnome that can perform basic household chores on his behalf; most of his inventions are borne out of a certain laziness. He calls the gnome Norbot, and appears to grow increasingly fond of him, much to Gromit’s envy. Feathers hacks into Norbot’s system, and transforms the harmless gnome into a menacing terminator.

At over 80 minutes long, Vengeance Most Fowl can feel a tad too stretched at times. These characters are at their best in short films, possibly because only one of them speaks. And it isn’t like stop-motion animation has evolved all that much in the last three decades; it remains as artisanal an art form as ever. Gromit, the Buster Keaton of the sitcom age, is still as expressive as he was back in the 1980s. But perhaps in an effort to pad up the extended run time, Park and his co-director Merlin Crossingham bring back the inept police officer Mackintosh, who is joined by a chipper rookie cop named Mukherjee.

In the tradition of classic crime-solving dimwits such as Inspector Clouseau and Thomson & Thompson, Mackintosh serves as the comic relief in a universe that is already pretty humorous. Wallace’s eccentricities appear to have become more pronounced in the years since we last saw him, when he was voiced by the late Peter Sallis. Now voiced by Ben Whitehead, who does a bang-up job of capturing his clueless buffoonery, Wallace remains oblivious to the obvious hazards of taming a piece of AI machinery. He’s also unbothered by Gromit’s growing paranoia around Norbot. But he’s Wallace; why would he care, as long as his crumpets are buttered and toasts jammed?

Like Ultron in the second Avengers movie, Norbot goes rogue after Feathers takes control of him, unleashing a crime spree across Wallace’s quaint village. Hedges are harassed and garden ornaments stolen. It’s amusing to note how rustic this series has remained, despite the obvious advances in animation, not to mention the allure of large-scale narratives. For instance, the climactic ‘chase’ sequence involves a couple of canal boats that are literally outpaced by an elderly lady on crutches. Plus, the police presence is restricted only to Mackintosh and Mukherjee for the entirety of the movie.

Also read – Orion and the Dark movie review: Genius writer Charlie Kaufman puts his existential stamp on Netflix’s oddest animated film yet

A still from Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

The cautionary tale might be a tad too dense for young children, especially those who’ve learned the alphabet on devices created by Alphabet Inc. And it’ll likely be too on-the-nose for adults. This is the film’s biggest flaw; there’s little complexity. Unlike animation houses such as Laika, whose boundary-pushing stop-motion movies are often ambitious to a fault, Aardman, at least as far as the Wallace and Gromit franchise is concerned, proudly embraces a less-is-more aesthetic. There is, after all, a distinct charm to watching clunky puppeteering and basic visual effects. Vengeance Most Fowl functions as a time machine to the past, but unlike one that Wallace might have made, it works.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Directors – Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham
Cast – Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith
Rating – 3.5/5