'Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl' review: A delightful romp with an anti-AI streak
For over a decade, we've been in a Wallace & Gromit drought. It's been 16 years since the franchise's last short, A Matter of Loaf and Death, and 19 since its first feature film, the Academy Award–winning Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. That's a long time to be apart from two of Britain's greatest treasures.
Thankfully, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is here to put an end to this international crisis. The new film from Aardman Animations and Netflix reunites us with the beloved Claymation duo, and the results hit as hard as a comforting cheese platter.
What's Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl about?
Directed by Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham, Vengeance Most Fowl begins with the return of a familiar face: that of Feathers McGraw, the penguin (and criminal mastermind) who attempted to steal a precious diamond in 1993's The Wrong Trousers. Thanks to cheese-loving inventor Wallace (voiced by Ben Whitehead) and his loyal beagle Gromit, Feathers ended up behind bars in a local zoo, plotting his revenge.
Meanwhile, over at 62 West Wallaby Street, Wallace has been puttering away on a slew of new inventions, including a smart gnome named Norbot (voiced by Reece Shearsmith). Gromit is already perturbed by Wallace's reliance on his many inventions, but Norbot is the last straw. Not only does he ruin Gromit's carefully tended garden, he also appears to be replacing Gromit as Wallace's right-hand man.
The threat of replacement is pretty harrowing — and resonant with current fears of AI replacing artists — but things go from bad to worse when Feathers McGraw, genius that he is, manages to hack Norbot and turn him down a dark path. With an army of angry Norbot customers and suspicious police officers breathing down Wallace's neck, it's up to Gromit to save the day and defeat Feathers once more.
Wallace and Gromit are charming as ever in Vengeance Most Fowl.
While Vengeance Most Fowl doesn't quite hit the highs of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, in part because of its reliance on The Wrong Trousers over a brand-new story, the film is still a delightful romp in all ways. Silliness reigns supreme here, with Vengeance Most Fowl's smallest details — including a deluge of puns and a cheese-themed captcha — just as likely to send you into orbit as its madcap set pieces, which involve everything from boats to office chairs.
Wallace and Gromit's dynamic remains charming as well, with a beleaguered Gromit once again cleaning up after the often-oblivious Wallace's mess. Beyond this central pairing, characters new and old add further layers to Vengeance Most Fowl. Feathers McGraw continues to prove his villainy and ingenuity, making him the perfect foil for Wallace and Gromit. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit's Chief Inspector Mackintosh (voiced by Peter Kay) returns as well, his bumbling ineptitude a source of many laughs. Joining him is PC Mukherjee (voiced by Lauren Patel), a new police officer who may be the most competent character in the film. (Human character, that is.)
Vengeance Most Fowl takes a stand against AI.
But it's Norbot who makes the biggest splash in Vengeance Most Fowl, bursting on screen with his glossy red cheeks and a ditty about tidying up that will surely get stuck in your head. On top of providing some of Vengeance Most Fowl's best moments, like an absurd charging sequence that understandably drives Gromit to extremes, Norbot's presence also gets at the film's key messaging about the dangers of using AI and tech to replace human creation and connection.
That messaging comes through right from the start of Vengeance Most Fowl, with the sheer number of Wallace's inventions creating distance between him and Gromit. The worst culprit? The Pet-O-Matic, a dog-petting machine that removes any contact between man and his best friend, leaving Gromit feeling farther from his master than ever. Meanwhile, Wallace hopes Gromit will "embrace tech" — even namedropping AI to prove a point.
Norbot takes these themes to further extremes. When we first see Gromit's garden, it's a colorful wonderland brimming with personality. By the time Norbot is done with it, though, it's become devoid of any personality, its variety of flowers and textures sanded down to smooth lawns and cubed topiaries. Watching it, it's hard not to think of so-called "AI art," which plunders the work of other artists and lacks any soul of its own. Vengeance Most Fowl is the first Wallace & Gromit film to come out after the rise of AI, and it's clear from the garden scene alone it already has a lot of thoughts on the subject.
The reason Wallace sics Norbot on Gromit's garden in the first place is because he thinks Gromit finds the manual labor of tending to his plants tedious. But for Gromit, whom we glimpse in small, peaceful moments of gardening, the process is the point. And it's hard to think of a filmmaking form where this emphasis on process resonates more than Claymation itself, Wallace & Gromit's bread and butter.
Claymation and stop-motion are painstaking, time-consuming journeys, but as Vengeance Most Fowl proves, their rewards are huge. Handcrafted sets and characters breathe new life and texture into the film, while Wallace's elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque inventions are boundlessly creative testaments to the time that goes into Claymation. When you're watching Vengeance Most Fowl, or any stop-motion animated movie, you're keenly aware that you're watching the culmination of years' worth of effort, just the same as when you look at Gromit's prized garden for the first time. That appreciation of effort and process is something no speedy Norbot or other AI could give you, and Vengeance Most Fowl rightfully wants you to know that.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl hits Netflix Jan. 3.
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