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.