Wallace & Gromit’s take on tech fits duo’s handcrafted esthethic

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This article was published 04/01/2025 (597 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new feature-length animated adventure starring the brilliant comic duo Wallace and Gromit has just arrived on Netflix, and it will have fans of previous W&G classics from British creator Nick Park feeling warm and nostalgic.

Here’s the thing, though. While the world of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is as funny, optimistic and utterly charming as ever, this lovingly rendered stop-motion project also manages to ask some serious and very topical questions about the role of tech in our lives.

And “that’s champion,” as Wallace would say.

A lot of cinematic examinations of tech are slick, futuristic sci-fi scenarios, but W&G, as always, goes its own eccentric way, being retro and rather cosy. The setting is a suburban semi-detached somewhere in Lancashire, and the era is hard to pin down, the franchise’s vaguely 1950s ambience now joined by clunky, clackety early computers.

Meanwhile, instead of some arrogant, overreaching Silicon Valley sociopath instigating a possible tech apocalypse, we have Wallace, a funny-looking, well-intentioned, sweetly oblivious kind of fellow with a real line in dad puns. And our potential AI overlords are malfunctioning garden gnomes.

Wallace (now voiced by Ben Whitehead, after the 2017 death of longtime Wallace voice actor Peter Sallis) still loves to create needlessly complicated mechanical gadgets for daily tasks, like the Dress-o-Matic and the Get-U-Up Delux and the Snoozatron. And these “cracking contraptions” continue to exasperate his loyal, level-headed canine companion Gromit.

Wallace’s designs are supposedly labour-saving wonders, but as a man who loves to tinker, he misses out on an obvious idea: Sometimes the labour itself is the point. I mean, why would you relegate petting your dear dog to a “Pet-o-Matic” machine?

This issue is put into horticultural terms in Vengeance Most Fowl. Gromit is happily puttering about in the back garden in a straw hat when Wallace decides he needs a voice-activated “Smart Gnome” to do all the work. Soon Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), a chipper but creepy robotic garden gnome, is aggressively pruning and mowing and “pointlessly blowing leaves around,” as Gromit looks on in silent doggy dismay.

And it’s not just that the final product is hideous: Gromit’s cheerfully colourful English garden is reduced to a sterile display of geometric topiary. It’s that Gromit enjoys the actual process of gardening. He doesn’t want to be sidelined by Wallace’s “cutting-hedge technology.”

Wallace, of course, never quick to pick up cues, remains enthusiastic. “It’s like Norbot knows what we need before we need it,” the happy inventor declares. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Well, when Feathers McGraw, the sinister penguin antagonist from The Wrong Trousers, enters the picture, plenty can go wrong.

Norbot is irritating enough when his Core Protocol is set to “GOOD.” But after Feathers, currently banged up in jail, hacks into Wallace’s computer and hijacks the robot, things really go haywire. Feathers changes his programming to “EVIL” — after scrolling down through several options that include “Pleasant,” “Unassuming,” “Bit Selfish” and “Grumpy” — and Norbot becomes an absolute menace to society.

Wallace and Gromit are soon dealing with runaway technology — literally, in this case, as they pursue Norbot and an army of malevolent garden gnomes in chase scenes that combine hair-raising suspense and knee-slapping physical comedy.

It’s all gloriously cinematic, with riffs on early James Bond, The Matrix and various heist films and prison-break movies. (Ex-con Feathers, despite being a penguin shaped like a bowling pin, somehow conveys as much coiled menace as Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear.)

And all the while, the characters’ tussles with technology are reflecting the filmmakers’ own. Park, now co-directing with Merlin Crossingham, mostly rejects the dizzying possibilities of 21st-century CGI currently used in most mainstream animation.

There have been changes since the first Wallace & Gromit short, A Grand Day Out, which took six years of work back in 1989. There are now some judiciously rationed digital effects, but the film is still basically handcrafted, to the extent you sometimes sense the smudgy imprints of the animators’ fingers.

Silicon moulds based on clay models are now used for some action scenes, but the animators still rely on claymation for facial expressions. (Gromit doesn’t speak, but his eyebrows say everything.)

Park’s insanely labour-intensive stop-motion approach can be seen in the intricate setups, still achieved through miniature textured and palpable sets layered with comedic details and weird references.

And it’s not just that the final product is warm, idiosyncratic and alive. You can feel the sheer joy in the process in every frame.

Vengeance Most Fowl may embody Wallace’s joy in tinkering, but with its old-school approach to animation, it also conveys Gromit’s innate skepticism about relying on technology just because you can.

And, most importantly, it’s a cracking good story.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca