The best of the bunch.
Director: Nick Park
Writer: Nick Park
Bob Baker
Brian Sibley
Runtime: 30 minutes
Plot: After draining their savings on gifts for Gromit's birthday, Wallace has to bring in a lodger, a seemingly innocent penguin who turns out to be a criminal mastermind who plans on using Wallace and his inventions to get what he needs.
I don't think I have a single bad thing to say about this, it's by far the best Wallace & Gromit film I've ever seen, and I've seen all five of them. Everything about this is equal parts ridiculous and smart, I've probably seen things like this done before and maybe even better but I don't care if they did it better, this one is my favourite.
So why is it my favourite? Feathers McGraw. Who is Feathers McGraw? The penguin villain who sticks a rubber glove on his tiny head and boom, he's a chicken. That alone is both the strangest and best concept for a villain ever, add to that that he too is silent (hell I don't even know if it is a he) and relies solely on the music queues to be as dramatic as possible to show the audience that yes, the villain is a penguin, and you're gonna have to be ok with that. The fact that nobody really sees behind the glove on his head and only sees the chicken is amazing too, very similar to a superhero who's alter ego has a vision impairment that nobody can see through. It's just...fuck I love this penguin. He's such a dramatic villain, even without saying a word or really emoting considering he doesn't have eyebrows or any other facial features, he just has a beak and two black, blinking dots for eyes...as a kid I never understood that but I got a sense of how menacing he was, now I see that it actually makes him an even better villain, he doesn't have to make grand speeches or anything he's just badass enough that he doesn't even have to say anything and you know he's a badass that you don't fuck with. It's so stupid to be looking at a plasticine penguin and thinking "this is one of the best animated villains I've seen in my whole damn life". The fact that he doesn't even go to normal prison and that he ends up in a zoo is great too like, it could be seen as commentary on how some animals may feel imprisoned against their will and I don't really know the intent but I just think it's pretty funny. I've gushed too much about Feathers, I'm gonna move on.
Another reason that this is my favourite is that really cool train chase scene which, for stop-motion animation and the time this came out would have been a bitch to make, and make it work as well as it does. I think it's just such a cool, high energy way to catching this penguin and after doing a little bit of research (I know I'm amazed too, barely did any for uni but I'm doing it loads for my reviews) and I found a quote from Nick Park with The Guardian on how they did the train scene.
Quote: "The train chase is something I'd never seen done before in stopframe animation. None of us knew how to do it - or even if it could work. In Tom and Jerry chases, you get used to the background whizzing by and repeating itself, so we tried the same. We built a 20ft long living room wall, 2ft high, and fixed the camera to the train, and filmed on a long shutter speed so the background looked blurry. It was quite a feat."
I imagine it was quite a feat to do that, but it came out so well and one of the best scenes I've ever seen in animation. I also heard that the car chase scene at the end of Toy Story was inspired by this but...I've got no credible sources for that so if anyone finds one hit me up with it.
Finally, one of the best things about this is all the tiny little jokes that go unnoticed unless you've watched it a million times because you have no life and you have a crippling appreciation for stop-motion animation. There's a nod to the previous film A Grand Day Out in the beginning where Gromit is reading the paper and the headline says Moon Cheese Shares Soar, another headline later in the film says Dog Reads Paper. Gromit listens to Bach which...I think is both a great joke depending on how you pronounce the composers name and a decent bit of trivia about the character. And finally, when Feathers is trying to make Gromit feel like an outsider and get him to leave, he plays How much is that doggie in the window and it's taken me years to realise that.
Peter Salis once again does such a great job of playing Wallace, and with the character design being better than it was in A Grand Day Out it fits so much more perfectly, the character is definitely more rounded out here and more of his naivety is shown making the fact that, even being so close to Feathers and not realising it's him with a rubber glove on his head is made so much more believable by Salis' voice.
I'm sorry this is such a short one but before editing it, this was just a crazy long waffle on how great Feathers McGraw is and just what a great film this is. I repeated myself so much to the point I had to cut a fair amount from this but if you've seen this and love it as much as I do, you'll know what I mean, if you've not seen it then...watch it, nothing's stopping you. Anyway, that's it for today, peace out baby.
This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this short. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this short then please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
No comments:
Post a Comment