Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl review: a joyful start to 2025

You’d by no means know from watching Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl that it’s been almost 20 years since The Curse of the Have been-Rabbit, the franchise’s final function movie, hit theaters. The long-running stop-motion animated sequence’ newest entry slips so effortlessly again into its signature screwball, charming groove that it’s arduous to consider the Netflix movie is technically a sequel to a film that got here out again when Netflix was nonetheless nothing greater than a DVD rental service. Rather a lot has modified since viewers final noticed Wallace and Gromit, however the pair stay — like so many different iconic display screen duos — timelessly humorous and endearing.

Vengeance Most Fowl by no means fairly matches its franchise’s highest highs, nevertheless it comfortably delivers most of the identical sorts of guffaws, visible gags, and comfortable particulars which have elevated Wallace and Gromit’s kooky adventures from the very starting. It’s a movie that is aware of how you can take advantage of out of what it’s acquired — whether or not that be a silent, mean-mugging penguin or a journalist with a minor narrative function whose title is the superbly cheeky “Onya Doorstep.” It’s additionally a sequel with lots on its thoughts, and it isn’t significantly refined in speaking its concepts concerning the risks that expertise and AI pose to the deeply human connections, together with these between a person and his canine, that preserve us all collectively.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl begins by flashing again to the night time that its heroes helped catch the would-be diamond thief often called “Feathers McGraw” on the finish of the Oscar-winning 1993 brief movie The Incorrect Trousers. The movie then follows the penguin as he spends his subsequent a few years dwelling a prison-like existence in an area zoo, figuring out, silently loathing his conceited guards, and ready for the second when he can lastly enact some vengeance on the person and canine who put him away. This opening sequence proves to be the proper intro to Vengeance Most Fowl, a movie that not often fails to inform its story in as economical and humorous a trend as doable. All it takes is co-directors Merlin Crossingham and Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park’s first canted close-up of Feathers’ silently scowling penguin face to appreciate what humorous, secure fingers you’re in.

Feathers will get the prospect he’s been ready for when the ever-eccentric, aloof Wallace (voiced right here by Ben Whitehead, who comfortably steps into the late, nice Peter Sallis’ sneakers) ignores his loyal companion Gromit’s rising dislike of his innovations and invents a robotic backyard gnome named Norbot (Reece Shearsmith). Wallace initially creates Norbot to assist Gromit handle his backyard, nevertheless it isn’t lengthy earlier than he’s determined to make use of the robotic as a much-needed supply of earnings by leasing him out to his neighbors. In doing so, Wallace unwittingly creates a window for Feathers to not solely reinsert himself again into his enemies’ lives, but in addition mastermind his long-awaited escape from his zoo jail by stealthily reprogramming Norbot and his many copies.

This premise is totally absurd, and Vengeance Most Fowl is aware of it. The movie has a whole lot of enjoyable operating wild with its technology-gone-wrong plot — filling its second act with loads of impressed, Silent Period-esque visuals involving a military of off-putting gnome robots. Park and Crossingham pack Vengeance Most Fowl to the brim with so many humorous particulars and pictures that you could be be inclined to rewatch it merely to see what you missed the primary time. Feathers’ long-distance hacking of Norbot’s synthetic mind, as an illustration, features a fast shot of the villainous penguin scrolling by means of the robotic’s angle settings, which vary from “nice” to “bit egocentric” to “actually nasty” and, in the end, “evil.” Just like the Paddington movies and some different, fashionable British comedies, Vengeance Most Fowl finds the appropriate steadiness between its dry English humorousness and the type of blunt-edged, but intelligent comedic gags that may make iconic display screen comedians like Buster Keaton and W.C. Fields proud.

It isn’t lengthy earlier than Gromit finally ends up embarking on a solo journey that, due to the character’s dialogue-free persona, permits Vengeance Most Fowl to let its visible playfulness take middle stage. Amid all of its many entertaining stop-motion set items, although, the movie manages to thematically tie its ridiculous heist-revenge story collectively by exploring the fissure created between Wallace and Gromit by the previous’s rising dependence on his machines. This subplot isn’t straightforward to overlook, not with Wallace repeatedly and obliviously raving concerning the deserves of a technology-reliant life-style in Vengeance Most Fowl‘s first act. The movie’s clearly fashionable concepts concerning the worrisome nature of AInonetheless strike a surprisingly emotional chord.

That is due in no small half to Vengeance Most Fowl‘s gorgeous stop-motion animation, which is employed significantly properly in its opening 10 minutes. This part of the movie reintroduces viewers to Feathers, Wallace, and Gromit, and the animation workforce’s masterful skill to speak Gromit’s feelings and reactions utilizing simply his eyebrows, eyes, and ears makes it straightforward to know the gap, disappointment, and loneliness that he feels due to his proprietor’s obsession with expertise. Few may have ever predicted that Vengeance Most Fowl would discover AI of all issues, however by exhibiting the numerous deeply felt ways in which automation and AI threaten to irrevocably separate its lovable leads, the movie efficiently highlights how simply and unnoticeably expertise can come between us and even these we love most.

Vengeance Most Fowl is so keyed into its lead characters’ strained relationship that, outdoors of 1 pretty forgettable B-plot involving a rookie cop and her halfway-out-the-door boss, it not often explores the world past Wallace and Gromit’s house. This may make the movie really feel surprisingly insular at instances, regardless of how lovingly all of its particular person frames are delivered to life. Thankfully, the comedy saves its greatest set items and most stunning photos for its finale, which sends Vengeance Most Fowl out on a excessive observe. Its flaws are, in different phrases, minimal, and whereas it virtually by no means exceeds its franchise’s set requirements, the movie delivers every thing that preexisting followers would possibly count on and a lot greater than newbies ever probably may. It’s an thrilling, welcome jolt of enjoyable and good humor to kick off the brand new yr.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is streaming now on Netflix.