Filmmaker Nick Park already had won two Oscars, the second for Wallace & Gromit’s The Wrong Trousers, when American viewers finally got to see that hilariously clever claymation short via a Wednesday evening PBS screening on March 20, 1995.
That’s how long it took to cross the pond. Unbelievable.
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| Wallace,left, thinks that his recently invented Norbot "helper gnome" will revolutionize back-yard gardening ... but the more practical Gromit has his doubts. |
Park and his Aardman production team subsequently made the world a better place, in their own modest way: not merely by bringing renewed respect to the painstaking art of sculpted clay animation, but because they also carved a niche for adorable, family-friendly British whimsy.
Along the way, Park and his hilariously eccentric claymation duo collected two more Academy Awards, for 1996’s A Close Shave and 2006’s feature-length The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
They’re all laden with folksy, tea-and-cheese, veddy-British charm, laced with countless spot gags and a wacky, off-kilter sense of humor.
Along with plenty of eyeball-rolling puns.
That’s also true of the many other delightful Aardman productions that kept us entertained along the way, among them Chicken Run, Arthur Christmas and Shaun the Sheep TV episodes and big-screen features.
All of which brings us to this new film: not merely the first Wallace & Gromit entry we’ve seen since 2010’s A Matter of Loaf and Death, but also an inspired sequel to The Wrong Trousers.
That earlier short’s villain — Feathers McGraw, the nefarious, inscrutable penguin who disguises himself as a chicken, with the help of a red rubber glove — is seeking payback. (Park and co-director Melin Crossingham must be the only people alive who could made a mute, animated penguin look sinister.)
A brief prologue recaps how the beloved duo captured Feathers, and turned him over to the constabulary; the penguin subsequently was sentenced to a “high-security institution” ... the local zoo.
The story proper kicks off on a typical day with the ceaselessly inventive Wallace (voiced by Ben Whitehead, sounding just like the late and very lamented Peter Sallis, who played this role for years). Wallace never met a simple task that couldn’t be “improved” via some crazily complicated contraption.
By way of example, each morning begins when Gromit activates the “Get Up Deluxe,” which opens the curtains in Wallace’s bedroom, tilts his bed, and — with the push of a red “launch” button — sends him down a chute, removes his pajamas, dumps him into a bathtub — with pre-wash, soak, scrub and eco cycles — then dries and plunges him into the Dress-O-Matic, after which he plops into the downstairs kitchen, fully clothed, in time for the automatically prepared tea-and-toast breakfast.
It’s a breathtaking 70 seconds — choreographed to Lorne Balfe and Julian Nott’s exhilarating score, with echoes of the iconic main theme — which sets the tone for future, equally frantic action sequences.
On this particular morning, Wallace’s new scheme involves transforming a garden-variety garden gnome into a robot assistant. The result is apple-cheeked Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), programmed to embrace any gardening chore with an exaggerated, mechanical-voiced cheerfulness that can’t help sounding sinister ... and earns more than a few eye rolls and long-suffering sighs from the far wiser Gromit.
(Some people find garden gnomes cute; others regard them as creepy. Park definitely plays to the latter sentiment, with an atmosphere that he describes as “gnome noir.”)
Norbot announces every task as he handles it, including (my favorite) “pointlessly blowing leaves around.”
Wallace deems the result successful, even though the overly enthusiastic Norbot does considerable damage to Gromit’s beloved garden. Despite that, the trio embarks on a neighborhood business venture dubbed “Gnome Improvements.”
Ah, but the crafty Feathers — even while locked up — manages to hack into Norbot’s programming, changing it from “good” to “evil.” Wallace doesn’t notice the difference, even when Norbot builds an army of duplicate gnomes, which march in unsettling lock-step much like the brooms enchanted by Mickey Mouse in 1940’s Fantasia.
Worse yet, the gnomes begin to steal all manner of stuff, which enrages the neighbors, and brings Wallace to the attention of Chief Inspector Mackintosh (Peter Kay). He has been looking forward to retirement on his beloved canal boat — dubbed Dun Nickin — and views the prospect of arresting a “deranged inventor” as his final great case.
His assistant, the enthusiastic and hard-working PC Mukherjee (Lauren Patel), takes a more cautious approach; she’s a strong believer in new-fangled police methods, such as (ahem) collecting evidence. She also isn’t persuaded that Wallace is guilty.
Poor Gromit, meanwhile, is overwhelmed by all the Norbots ... and what is the method behind all the stuff they’re stealing?
Given the flow and increasingly frantic storyline, it’s impossible to catch all the cute background touches; this definitely is a film that demands repeat viewing, to appreciate all the details and Easter Eggs. Just a few examples include Gromit’s bedroom, with its dog bone-design wallpaper; a fleeting appearance of Shaun the Sheep’s Mossy Bottom Farm, and its cantankerous owner; the numerous “Wanted” posters in Mackintosh’s police station; a computer captcha challenge; and nods to films such as Cape Fear, The Matrix, Shawshank Redemption and The Birds.
As Park says, in this film’s production notes, the aggressively silly nature of these characters allows a cinematic landscape that veers from Ealing comedy, to Hammer horror, to Hitchcockian suspense, and James Bond action.
Given that The Wrong Trousers climaxed with a hilariously frantic chase scene via model railroad locomotives, Park and co-scripter Mark Burton go to the other extreme here, with a chase sequence via canal boats, one of them dubbed The Accrington Queen. (You know the average speed of canal boats, right?)
It’s all totally delightful, from start to finish: 82 minutes of pure, absurdist joy.
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