Year: 2024
Director: Nick Park
We watched this on yer ‘flix a couple of nights ago. It was a shared family experience of the kind that happens very rarely these days. The appeal of W&G is as close to universal as is possible, I would say and we all enjoyed it.
I think music fans like us like to see our creative heroes develop and become increasingly sophisticated. However, in this case I think it’s OK that this new film broke no new ground and what we get is another rollicking adventure where our heroes work to thwart another baddie. I don’t want to expand on too much detail because that would mean spoiling a lot of the jokes but the scene involving banana skins was deeply funny. I think it was the Doddy-esque “death of a thousand cuts”, where the jokes are so rapid and frequent that some straightforward slapstick can floor you – even though it doesn’t sound funny when describing it. I it think it was Nietzsche who said trying to describe comedy is like trying to mount a space hopper in the bath.
The Wallace & Gromit productions are all wonderful and this should not disappoint anyone. The absence of Peter Sallis is sad of course, but Wallace’s voice sounds very much like him. There is no edge to this review – I loved it.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Purple & Brown, Morph, Trap Door.
And for the big kids who like hard copies, 25th Nov 2024 saw the 4K UHD blu-ray release of Wallace & Gromit: The Collection.
A Grand Day Out (1989) / The Wrong Trousers (1993) / A Close Shave (1995) / A Matter Of Loaf And Death (2008) with audio commentaries, and A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman. All are currently on iPlayer (in 720p quality).
Best thing on TV this Xmas by a country mile.
The truly wonderful thing about W&G is their so beautifully crafted that you’ll twig even more jokes on subsequent viewings
100% agree.
It was probably a little too long, but the gag-per-minute rate was still very high indeed, and some of it – (spoiler alert) the re-boot, the nun sight gag, the fate of the gnome bagpiper – was inspired. I laughed more in one minute of this than I did in all of the more popular Gavin & Stacey.
The work required is obviously enormous (as in that old Fast Show sketch: “then I move it – just a touch”), but I imagine that being part of the crew and seeing your efforts come gloriously, hilariously to life, must feel truly special.
Oh, and Feathers McGraw is one of the best film villains in a very long time. His face consists only of two eyes and a nose but somehow it can convey absolute fury and ruthless cunning. Genius.
It was truly excellent, so many references to other films, visual jokes, everything… I loved it. I think maybe the best one of them all.
Accrington Queen…
There were several points where I did a LOL and Madame Foxy just turned and looked at me quizically, unaware of the source of my mirth. If I’d taken the time to explain the reference, I’d have missed the next two.
I am now using ‘Snoozy Choc’ at home when referring to hot chocolate.
The Great Escape at around 39 minutes, where the water disappears through the cracks in the floor, Shawshank: newspaper clipping covering the hole in the wall. We really enjoyed it.
Italian Job reference also I think. I almost thought Wallace was going to say “I’ve got a plan…”.
Policeman’s boat called Dun Nickin’
TV presenter – Anton Deck
News reporter – Onya Doorstep
The ‘No Parkin’ sign on the wall on the Yorkshire/Lancahire border.
I wonder in cynical moments whether AI might have been employed in the animation?
That aside, it’s a work of rare genius.
Anton Deck. I mean, come on 👌
…the cut to a shot of two incredibly slow canal boats had my crying with laughter.
That and Bob&Paul fishing were the best things on our telly over Christmas. I need to see W&G again, to find all the ‘Easter eggs.’
I tend to agree about Bob & Paul, but W&G is well down the list because I’m in the camp that has never understood the appeal. I saw bits of the one that was on this but I struggle to get past the gurning faces – I really hated those adverts back in the 80’s and 90’s that kicked it all off. I did spot some amusing bits but the downsides put me off too much.
I sort of agree. I’ve certainly been lukewarm on some of the previous ones, but this was the right thing at the right time for me.
I’m with you guys. Missed the No Parkin bit – must rewatch.
I was once the informal judge at a ‘parkin off’ – bliss.
I would argue that the Wallace &Gromit movies have been among the outstanding achievements of modern British culture – and rollicking good fun.
There’s a Wallace and Gromit Facebook which has been brought to my attention that has quite a few screenshots from VMF with ‘Easter Eggs’.
Loved the previous stuff but we both thought VMF was too clever by half, trying too too hard. Thumbs down from The Languedoc.
In a nod to the late Peter Sallis you could see Cleggy’s coat and flat cap hung up behind the door … a nice little tribute
That’s great.
Watched it yesterday and enjoyed it. The attention to detail is ridiculous. I saw the Facebook post that had a screenshot of the computer code used to operate the robot. This would have been fully visible on the screen for a couple of seconds at most during the show. At the bottom right there is a list of Motor Functions that contains Head, Shoulders, Knees, Toes, Knees, Toes, +Eyes, +Ears, +Mouth, +Nose.
And on the top left the spec list includes Input, Output, Shake-it-all-about-put
Madame Butter Pies.
If you’re not from Lancashire, you won’t get it.
I don’t think it was ever said where the earlier films were set, but the streets and hills to me looked like Bristol, where Aardman are based. This one was deliberately meant to be in Lancashire, where Nick Park is from, leading to more specific local jokes.
Wallace clearly a northerner though, and most characters I think, I just assumed set in some fictional northern town.
Haven’t seen the latest one yet. I used to live in the same house in Bristol in the 90s as someone who worked for Aardman in a creative role. I wonder why they have made so few W & G films over the decades. I should have asked her
Hint: it took six years to make this one..
That would explain it. I know they have other projects too.
Who does the voice of Wallace in the new one?
Ben Whitehead.
I remember dear old Bob Numbers asking a similar question on here once and getting told he could just google it himself. He totally lost his sh*t, as we came to realise, was his habit. Good times!
Blimey, Bob Numbers. That’s going back a bit.
What I didn’t realise, until I saw the Aardman documentary on iPlayer, is that A Grand Day Out started as Nick Park’s undergraduate project. After a couple of years he’d made something like 5 minutes of it, and Aardman helped finish it during his sandwich year with them.
I think I also saw Park say that he wouldn’t hire the person who made A Grand Day Out today as it wouldn’t be technically good enough. Good though it is, it does look a bit primitive compared to what they do now.
The address given is 62 West Wallaby Street, Wigan,
I was in Todmorden market last year and one of the stalls was selling butter pies, I had to ask.
In Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey by McCartney there’s the lines.
“I had another look and I had a cup of tea and butter pie
Butter pie?
The butter wouldn’t melt so I put it in the pie.”
Keep Out/No YOU Keep Out
Magnificent.
Maybe W and G has always been at heart about obsessive detail. This was the first time (perhaps remembering Loaf and Death fondly) where I felt there was a little too much about the callbacks and not enough of the sense of something new to marvel at in the Wallaceverse. Great to bring Feathers back, great to see the getting ready in the morning machine, great to see Grommit’s expressions when he is exiled in favour of something shiny and new, but we have seen these beats before. Peter Kay and a robot gnome weren’t for me as strong as previous new entrants. So I still marvelled and chortled at the details, while feeling that perhaps it didn’t scale the heights overall of previous entries.
We loved it. Some real family guffaws, which were wonderful to hear on Christmas night.
The biggest, from me at least, was the moment Wallace blundered through the camp site and knocked down a portaloo to reveal a bloke sat on the toilet.
I enjoyed it so much I watched it again in bed that night on my IPad.
The notice board in the Police Station is worth poring over. ‘Police Notice: DO NOT COMMIT CRIME’ One of the Wanted posters shows the villainess from Chicken Run.
And at the zoo. ‘No Swearing Near The Parrot’
‘Pointlessly blowing leaves around’.
‘Neat and Tidy, Mr. Wallace’.
A couple of visual things. The basement of the house must be a nod to the Tardis, and in one scene, it looked like a Bosch painting of hell. The view down into the valley in the aqueduct looked a bit like a famous scene in Black Narcissus, when two of the nuns fight at the bell which hangs over the sheer drop.
Really enjoyed Wallace & Grommit, Gavin & Stacey and Outnumbered.
Pity they weren’t called Nice and Tidy.
Watched a doc about Viv and then SHaRE over the weekend.
The world needs more Vivs
One was more than enough.
Our next door neighbour* has a vast range of petrol-engined tools, and I look forward to muttering Norbot’s lines many times in the future.
*We do get on extremely well with them, but oh dear, the tools…
We watched VMF on Netflix last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. My only regret was it was not released for any cinema screenings here in Sweden. (These streaming companies are very insistent on having exclusivity!),
I would love to see it on a big screen with a large audience. With all the love and care that’s gone into it, it deserves to be shown in the cinema. And it deserves to be re-watched, just to notice all the gags that we missed first time.
That said, moseleymoles does have a point: it didn’t break any new ground. But when Aardman have produced such a wonderfully entertaining movie, it seems churlish to want that.
I was recently watching a few minutes of the Sean the Sheep Xmas movie, The Flight Before Xmas, and really enjoyed that. too.
You wouldn’t have thought that Aardman could possibly follow W & G. But both the TV series and movies featuring those wonderful, woolly miscreats are wonderful. So many hilarious visual gags. And another long-suffering, rather charismatic pooch constantly trying to put things right,
Aardman is world class. Up there with Studio Ghibli, Pixar, Dreamworks, Disney and Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon.
Any others I’ve missed?
I suspect that the talented crew from Bristol are great fans of classic cartoon shows like Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, Yogi Bear etc.
They have learnt from their predecessors and are the modern masters of the non-verbal, visual gag.
Slightly less known, The Pirates! In an adventure with Scientists is wonderful.
Hugh Grant was in his element.
A huge UP for The Pirates. It is one of the best things they have done IMHO & introduced my children to Swords Of A Thousand Men in this brilliant intro (link below).
Hugh Grant has been brilliant in everything he’s been in these last few years. Really looking forward to seeing The Heretic
Saw The Heretic the other day – the Four Weddings hitmaker is in fine form.
By some way the best things in it, though the young female leads are good too. For me [potential plot spoiler though I’m trying to be a discrete as possible] the film went from interesting to silly when the action moved from the ground floor to the basement.
@Gatz – yes, I thought that too. Up to that point, had been genuinely tense and creepy.
We had our traditional Christmas watch of Love Actually each time I see it I reflect on how good he is in it.
Great job in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
My apologies for going slightly off-piste, but I chanced upon this interview with Hugh Grant about Pirates.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/video/2012/mar/28/pirates-adventure-scientists-hugh-grant-video?CMP=twt_gu
He was vey impressed by the script which was based on a book by Gideon Defoe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirates!_In_an_Adventure_with_Scientists
His books sound like a lot of fun. Has anyone read them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Defoe
David Tennant, Martin Freeman, Salma Hayek….
It’s an all-star cast!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1430626/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_ov_wr#writer
It says a lot about how respected Aardman are that they can get actors of this calibre working with them.
A friend just sent me a mail introducing me to the wonderful world of aptonyms: people whose surnames are hilariously appropriate for their profession.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym
Aardman are wonderfully aware of the comic possibilities of aptonyms. In RMF, there’s a local TV reporter called …. Onya Doorstep.
Spoiler alert for AW Welsh speakers!!!
Here are some Welsh celebrities responding to the first few minutes of the movie. In Welsh of course.
The Wrong Trousers was only 29 minutes long. But it was the equivalent of a major number one hit record for Aardman. Overnight, Wallace and Gromit became National Treasures.
It seems very appropriate that it was an ex-pat, @Black_Celebration in New Zealand, who started this thread. As another ex-pat, I must confess I feel a tad homesick watching Aardman’s films.
Considering how dearly loved Aardman are, they haven’t actually made so many films.
Here’s a Guardian (ranked) list of their finest films.
https://amp.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/19/aardmans-20-best-films-ranked
It’s interesting. But I certainly do not agree with it! Chicken Run as Aardman’s finest hour? Not a chance!
Thanks KFD. I think the first thing of theirs I saw was Creature Comforts. Real people are interviewed and then the results are used to as a soundtrack for claymation animals.
They did special ones on TV in order to flog household electricity. My favourite is the one with the pigs.
The best bits for me of the Creature Comforts clips were the incidental details, often in the background, often involving younger animals not quite behaving and often gently admonished by older siblings or parents. I did wonder whether those were in the ‘original’ videos (if it was more then an audio track that was used as basis), or whether they were invented by Nick Park.
I love the way the mother pig covers her son’s mouth with her trotter to shut him up – and slightly pauses as she realises the boy has his tongue out.
Psst… that’s not a pig.
One thing I do like about Aardman is their strong connection with the local community in Bristol. This year there will be a Gromit Unleashed 3 Sculpture Trail to raise money for charity.
https://secretbristol.com/gromit-unleashed-3/
Here’s an animation they did for The Bristol Old Vic.
And now a behind-the-scenes visit to Aardman.
This BAFTA clip is full of fascinating stuff. All the care and thought that goes into the lighting of Feathers McGraw to make him truly sinister! Not to mention all the genre-hopping.
Even Blue Peter have been on a visit! What an opportunity for this young lad!
A studio visit from when they were filming the Were-Rabbit.
Vastly enjoyable to visit all the different departments. It’s an enormous workplace..
There was a LAIKA Studio exhibition at the BFI as part of their stop motion season last year, packed with models, puppets and sets. A small space but fascinating.
This is a favourite Aardman.
That is absolutely brilliant @hubert_rawlinson! A delight to see Aardman stepping outside their comfort zone. Actually, it’s from 1989, so before they found their comfort zone.
Written by Barry Purves. An interesting chap!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Purves
Here is his stop motion elegy to Tchaikovsky!
@kaisfatdad
@hubert-rawlinson
Last time I help 😉
Click on the AWer’s name. That will take you to their homepage. There you will find the @name that definitely works. Copy and paste that into your text…. Fish for life!
Thanks Dai and Sewer! Shame on me! It was late at night and I wanted to get to bed.
Less haste, more speed.
This morning, YouTube recommended this hour long doc about the history of the company: A Grand Night In.
Morph was their first major hit.
One thing has been puzzling me. With their enormous army of very talented staff, and their very slow rate of production due to a fantastic perfectionism, how on earth can Aardman make any profit?
I’m guessing that doing ads can be quite lucrative for them.
I googled and discovered that they don’t always make a profit and last year had to lay off 20 staff.
https://www.animationmagazine.net/2024/10/aardman-cuts-20-jobs-in-the-face-of-720k-loss/
Hopefully VMF will help to turn things round.
Animation Magazine looks like a fascinating read.
It’s very slow going
Here’s another small W & G treat to brighten your day,
Mats, one of my colleagues from Bio Reflexen tipped me off about this.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0026881
It looks like a great series for cinephiles. v