Wallace And Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl Review

I was looking forward to watching this one since it came out, ages ago now, but it’s on Netflix now, so here we are. I finally watched it. The first full Wallace and Gromit film in years, a franchise that is definitely the British staple at this point, with the titular characters, undoubtedly, along with Paddington, being some of the most iconic British characters ever. And as a British person myself, of course I ended up watching the next film in the series. This film marks the return of villain ‘Feathers Mcgraw’ from the wrong trousers, their most well known villain. And, honestly, while bringing him back feels like kind of nostalgia bait for people who grew up with the films, they did a great job of still keeping him a great, and unapologetically, cartoonishly evil villain. He definitely feels like the same character, only now in a different situation (using Wallace’s inventions to break out of prison) which I feel like is always good when you are bringing back old, beloved villains. In fact, Feathers is probably my favourite part of the film. I love how he just, from first glance, is a cute little penguin, but is actually an unapologetically evil mastermind. Every scene with him was fun, and I loved his evil plan, to frame Wallace, by hacking his own robots. Also this film lightly nods to A.I replacing everyone, with Wallace’s little gnome idiots taking over all of Gromit’s gardening jobs. 

The film also is hilarious, and really fun. There’s some really good visual comedy throughout it, like Aardman usually does, and there's quite a few references to things mostly British people will understand, again, Aardman special. I think the two police officers were some pretty great comedic relief characters too, with the older one being obviously incompetent, and the new recruit being an actually well trained officer, who he treats as silly for even suggesting obvious things in investigations. Absolutely peak dynamic, they were such fun characters and added to the films enjoyment.

One thing to note, is that the film is really quite short, at only 77 minutes, and yet it doesn’t feel like anything is really that underbaked, due to the fact, that, unlike another shortish movie I watched lately (k-pop demon hunters), it doesn’t waste any times setting up major characters, due to the fact that it doesn’t need to. We all know who Wallace and Gromit are, and the film doesn’t talk down on us by treating us like we don’t know. It just jumps right into the inciting incident quite quickly, instead of spending time explaining who they are. There is a LITTLE part that recaps how Feathers got put into prison, due to that being quite important to a lot of the film’s conflicts. But it doesn’t waste our time. It essentially, is, like a longer version of a Wallace and Gromit episode. But that segues nicely into my main complaint for the film; it kind of doesn’t feel like Aardman is taking any risks for this film at all. It is very much them doing something that they know works, with characters that are undoubtedly great, but it hardly introduces new characters or new concepts. It kind of feels like your typical Wallace and Gromit venturing, without trying anything new. Like, I really liked the film, I had a blast with it, but in the current drought of originality in films, with companies all trying to nostalgia bait as they know it’ll work, and give them profit in return, I just wish we got more original stuff. Because the last original production from Aardman, for example, was ‘Robin Robin’ which was released almost 4 years ago now. I just hope more studios try daring stuff, like DreamWorks and Sony have been doing, instead of clinging on to IP and already popular brands. That being said, I still really like this film, rant about the current state of the film industry aside, and I would probably give it a strong 7 to a light 8.