Wallace & Gromit - A Matter Of Loaf And Death

I have issues with this one.

Director: Nick Park
Writers: Bob Baker
               Nick Park
Runtime: 30 minutes

Plot: After what you can assume was a devastating rejection/break up with Lady Tottington, Wallace's love interest from Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wallace moves on to his new job as a baker and finds new love in the Bake O Lite girl. However, it seems as though Wallace has bitten off more than he can chew. 

I vividly remember when this came out. It was Christmas day about a million years ago when Christmas day was actually fun rather than a disappointing end to a perfect build-up. I remember seeing that this was a new Wallace & Gromit film and was fairly excited to see it, I think it was on when it was dark so probably anytime after 4 pm but it was after dinner too so it was on after 6. I remember watching it and loving it.

Oh, how the tides have turned.

Christmas day is just a boring end to a fabulous month of love, coming together as a planet, giving without expecting anything in return (unless you're giving money in exchange for goods...that's a different story) and anything Wallace & Gromit related that isn't The Wrong Trousers is just cute as best and just interesting enough at worst. This one falls into the former category, just cute. You know there's no mystery, as soon as Piella (Sally Lindsay) hits the screen you know it was her. There is no mystery at all but it's fun to see Wallace just go along with it.

Aside from it being cute what else is good about it? Well, we have an update on Feathers, he has escaped custody from the zoo. How do I know this? There's a moment where I paused the film to go and make a brew and when I got back I noticed a poster on the wall of the zoo saying something along the lines of "have you seen this penguin". It's nice we're being kept updated on this little guy.  Gromit finally has a girlfriend too, a dog named fluffles voiced by Melissa Collier, it's a cute little romance and it's nice to see Gromit get somewhere with a lady for once. I also made a note about something being beautifully psychotic but I don't remember what it was about so...there's that. There was something beautifully psychotic in this film.

The bad things? What the hell happened to Lady Tottington? Wallace gets engaged to a woman without a single mention of the Lady, I mean...they were definitely a thing right? She even said she had feelings for him? Was it a class difference? Because if so then she's way too far up herself for a bird from Yorkshire, royalty and...whatever Lords and Ladies are classed as have married common folk before. Most notably (and recently and what I can think of off the top of my head) Kate Middleton, she was a "commoner" and married into royalty. So whatever it was that Tottington had against Wallace but she missed out, like she was the best thing that happened to him but at the same time he's probably the best thing that happened to her so you know.

Another kinda bad thing was that there weren't many of the little things you usually get with Wallace & Gromit, and that's kinda sad too, don't get me wrong there were some but...just not as many little in-jokes or puns or anything like that.

I also felt like this was just a bland entry, I know everyone's heart and soul goes into making one of these and I really do appreciate it, the dedication, the effort and everything else. I mean the idea was alright, having a woman going on a murderous rampage in the style of a black widow spider...except I'm not sure she ever married them but...basically the same thing, right? Either way, this was just a cute little short with a decent idea and a beautifully psychotic moment mixed in.

And that's it for all my Wallace & Gromit reviews, hope you enjoyed them as much as I did and I hope you enjoyed reading these as much as I did writing them, and let's not forget Peter Salis, without him I don't think this series would have been the same (alongside all the people working on the films but...the reason I did these was to honour Salis' memory). Have a good night/day whatever and whenever you're reading this. Peace out.

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.

Wallace & Gromit - Curse Of The Were-Rabbit

It's alright...

Director: Nick Park

                Steve Box

Writers: Nick Park (Screenplay)

                Steve Box (Screenplay)

                Mark Burton (Screenplay)

                Bob Baker ( Screenplay)

Runtime: 1hr 25 minutes

Plot: Wallace's cheese addiction seems to be taking control and he's gaining weight because of it, due to this he decides that brainwashing is the best way to go about it. Wallace & Gromit have founded a new company Anti-Pesto, who deal in humanely taking care of rabbit's that attack the local veggies. When Wallace decides to combine the idea of brainwashing and rabbits a monster is created.

The first and only feature length film from the duo and it's a busy place to be. I get why it's busy but I always felt like Wallace & Gromit work better as just the two of them (or with an optional Penguin added into the mix) but y'know, longer running time means you gotta add a bigger cast. A bigger cast can bring in quite a few perks and a fair amount of shit to a film and...sometimes the good can outweigh the bad like here, regardless of the fact that I don't like that there's a bigger cast, it works in this film's favour, unlike with some DC film where a cast of popular villains was just thrown together...I'm not here for another kick off about that piece of trash.

The good thing about this is it's strange yet plausible plot. Wallace hates vegetables and decides to brainwash himself into liking them. They run a company called Anti-Pesto which is a humane pest control company. They're running out of space so Wallace decides to kill two birds with one stone and brainwash the bunnies into hating veggies while testing out his brainwashing machine. Shit goes south pretty quickly and Wallace becomes a were-rabbit. What's a were-rabbit? From my gathering, it's like a werewolf but instead of the transformation happening on a full moon, it happens every night. Weird logic yes but...it works so we're not gonna question it. The only thing that can kill this creature is a 24 Carat Gold bullet...or a fall from a high building, whichever is more convenient for the plot really. 

Another great thing is Wallace's cheese hiding places. That already sounds weird so I'll elaborate, Wallace has hidden cheese in his home in almost spy-like levels of secrecy and protection like this guy has his cheese hidden behind something which is opened by pulling out a cheese related book pun. Here are the books that were turned into puns.

• Brighton Roquefort
• How Green Was My Cheese
• Brie Encounter
• Swiss Cheese Family Robinson
• East of Edam
• Grated Expectations
• Fromage to Eternity
• Waiting for Gouda

I don't even care, all of those are the best.

The romance between Wallace and Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham-Carter) is lovely, she seems to really like Wallace and towards the end of the film, it seems like they're gonna get together if they weren't already there. However, I don't think it was really all that necessary, I mean...it really didn't do anything to plot aside from him being a dick during his transformation, her taking it the wrong way and then finding out he was just trying to hide his horrible secret from her. It's a cute little side plot but aside from taking elements of King Kong, I don't really think they did much with it and they could have done y'know? I don't really know what they could have done with it because all these romance stories are the same but...c'mon this is Wallace & Gromit, you guys made a penguin a chicken and turned him into a diamond thief! Do something crazy with it. It was still a cute little side plot, even if it wasn't all that necessary.

Gromit went to Dogwarts University which is probably my favourite dog related pun to come out of these, like you know someone read/saw Harry Potter and thought damn, let's get a joke with that in there and I'm glad they did, I wonder what house he was sorted into...hold on I'm gonna google it.

*25 minutes later*

After a fair amount of searching I have discovered that Gromit did not have a house, however, he did graduate with a double first in Engineering for Dogs and I'm both amazed and mad that a plasticine dog got a higher grade in uni than I ever could. 

Moving onto the negatives, there are only two big ones that managed to bug me so much that they needed to be mentioned. I've already briefly talked about one of them, that being the fact that it's said only a gold bullet can kill the beast and yet...a fall from a great height manages it? Or was it Wallace as the were-rabbit sacrificing himself to save Gromit after he saved him? I don't know but that bull is not explained at all and I feel like it should have been. I know that not all questions in films should be answered...like how did that weird loop in Predestination start? But when you state in your film that the only way to do something is with this thing and then you do another thing you can't just throw a shrug in there like "Oh well, I guess the answer was love after all". No. I won't accept it. I'll accept literally any explanation that's not that, or at least explain how the love did it. This isn't Frozen, it's Wallace & Gromit. I won't deny that there is obviously a love between these characters but...fuck just explain it and I'll be happy pal.

The other thing that bothered me was the name change. Apparently this wasn't originally intended to be called Curse of the Were-Rabbit, it was meant to be The Great Vegetable Plot but apparently, that didn't resonate very well with American audiences and that sucks because that's a funny name. How is it funny? Because plot refers to a mystery and where veggies grow so now you know and now you know what you missed out on. That's fucking funny dude. 

The whole film is just...ok overall. The villain is...predictable, the romance is cute and unnecessary, the plot has potential but thinking about it, I feel like they could have done something different with it. If you wanna check it out I'm not gonna stop you but don't get your hopes up too high with it, it's just cute and kinda bland. That's it for today, peace out and don't try to brainwash yourself...it's probably not gonna work.

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.

Wallace & Gromit - A Close Shave

This kind of disturbs me the more I think about it.

Director: Nick Park
Writers: Nick Park
               Bob Baker
Runtime: 30 minutes

Plot: Wallace falls for a woman who looks almost exactly like him while Gromit is framed for sheep rustling. 

This is the first one where Peter Salis wasn't the only one in the recording booth, he finally has other human beings to work off of and...it just doesn't work as well as the previous two. It's still good don't get me wrong, but there's just something about having more voices makes it more crowded I suppose. Not sure if that's even the right wording I should have used but it's the only one I can think of.

The good things in this are all the little things that are not exactly hidden but you wouldn't really notice them unless you knew to look for these kinds of things. Such as when Gromit is in prison, the words Feathers was 'ere is written on the wall which is a call back to the last film but then we see that this is a regular prison and last time we saw Feathers he was in a zoo. How many times has this penguin been in and out of jail? Another cool little thing was the book Gromit was reading, we're used to seeing dog puns here and I just love them, this one is no different. Gromit is reading a copy of Crime and Punishment by Fido Dogstoyevsky. Once again, that shit is hilarious. Finally, and arguably the best thing about this film, it's the very first appearance of Shaun the Sheep.

The bad things? Well...there's one but honestly, it's just a theory of mine that's barely got any evidence but the evidence that's there is enough for me to draw this conclusion. I have come to the conclusion, that Wallace and Wendolene (Anne Reid) are related somehow.
...I'm aware of what a stretch that is but bear with me.

So there's the fact that these two look...eerily similar right? She's just a female version of Wallace without the love of cheese...or tinkering with inventions, but her father was. Maybe the "inventive" gene or whatever is only in the men of the family. Like the smart gene only being in the Simpson women in The Simpsons. Maybe their mother loved cheese so much (just like Wallace does) that it impacted their marriage that she scooped up little Wallace and took off into the night, leaving her cheese hating husband/boyfriend and daughter behind. Wouldn't be such a far fetched idea considering Wallace has a bit of a crisis over the fact that Wendolene is allergic to it. I understand how fragmented this might seem with all this evidence but watch this again with this in mind and tell me I'm not onto something. Dare you.

That's it from me today, sorry I've not done this every day as I said I would but I was writing Thursday night until the election results got involved and I was pinned to that the whole night, then I was away and barely had good internet to update so...it's here now, can't complain about that. Peace out tho guys.

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.

Wallace & Gromit - The Wrong Trousers

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.

Wallace & Gromit - A Grand Day Out

Bit of a change for this week.

This week I was going to go back to my old schedule of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and I had everything written out but then I saw the sad news that Peter Salis had died. Peter Salis was an English actor most known for playing Cleggy in Last Of The Summer Wine and Wallace, from the stop-motion shorts Wallace & Gromit. So in respect of his passing, this week I'll be looking at all of his work as Wallace in chronological order, from A Grand Day Out to A Matter Of Loaf & Death.

Director: Nick Park

Writer: Nick Park

Runtime: 23 Minutes

Plot: It's bank holiday and Wallace and Gromit are looking to find somewhere to do based around cheese. Of course, they end up on the moon and have a strange encounter with a moon robot. 

When I first saw this short, it scared the hell out of me as a kid. I don't know why particularly, it was probably that space oven robot thing, but watching it as an adult and after finding a bigger appreciation of stop-motion animation I've found that it's actually funnier than I thought it was as a kid. So let's have a grand...time reading this then going back to watching the short in your bedroom...I've really gotta work on being funny.

The best thing about this short is the weird comedy. There's a joke when they reach the moon where they get out of their rocket without any space suit or anything to help them breathe, gravity is all fine. It's basically like they're on Earth but...they're on the moon made of cheese. Wallace decides to bounce a ball and it flies away into space. As a kid, I didn't get the joke and even when I watched it last night I got it a bit more but laughed anyway because it was a stupid joke. The rest of the comedy comes from Wallace being an idiot and Gromit reacting to him, unable to actually say something because...he's a dog, something that would later become a formula for these characters. 

There are two things I definitely want in real life from this short. The magazines Cheese Holidays and more money for that robot. I'll explain a little more. There is a robot on the moon that wants to go skiing but in order to be able to...have a consciousness I guess, it needs to have money in the meter. Towards the end of the short, this little robot goes crazy, trying to get into the rocket with Wallace and Gromit trying to be able to go to Earth to go and ski, however, Wallace thinks this thing is coming to attack him for taking home some moon cheese. It's a pretty funny bit. Unfortunately, the rocket blasts off and the robot gets blasted out of the rocket, but not after taking a couple of pieces of it with it. That's fine, it even makes little ski's out of the pieces of metal it pulled off. It goes skiing and the short ends happily ever after....but my question is, that thing needs money to stay alive...how is gonna continue when it's 20p runs out? This isn't a happy ending it's a damn tragedy.

To wrap this up, I'll talk about how Salis did in the role of Wallace and really the only voice in the short. In my opinion, Salis was a perfect fit for this character, genuinely perfect casting. Hearing his voice separate from this character messes with my head so much. He plays the character like a lovable fool, like the harmless elderly person at the bus stop who's just so nice but deep down you know they've had a crazy life. I always got the sense that Wallace was some crazy scientist in his younger years and Salis definitely brings that out in the character. I cannot imagine this character having any other voice. 

Overall, I did love this short and watching it again after, admittedly, a fairly long time and after the passing of Peter Salis, I found it both sad and lovely. It's nothing spectacular by all means I mean, it's a fairly quiet short of a man and his dog going to the moon to eat cheese. I think what made it kick off was how both surreal and relatable it was.  This was a nice start to the week, despite the sad circumstances it's come under.

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.