Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) Review: It’s Cracking Fun!
Cracking toast, Wallace & Gromit! The beloved duo is back with their second feature-length stop-motion animated film called Vengeance Most Fowl since The Curse of the Were-Rabbit nearly 20 years ago. This time, we have the silent but nefarious penguin Feathers McGraw added to the cast. Of course, this isn’t the penguin’s first appearance since the villain was initially introduced in the second Wallace & Gromit short The Wrong Trousers back in 1993.
Now he’s back with a vengeance after Wallace and Gromit last put him in jail and foiled his blue diamond heist. Imprisoned in a city zoo, to be exact. Earlier in the movie, there’s a nod to Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake Cape Fear as Feathers pulls off a sinister Robert De Niro’s Max Cady-like vibe working out in the prison, complete with the familiar chilling crescendos playing in the background.
Meanwhile, Wallace (voiced by Ben Whitehead, who does a good job here capturing the inventor’s geeky and whimsical charm after Peter Sallis died in 2017) continues to get busy with his new invention to make his life and his loyal pooch, Gromit easier. We see Wallace is heavily dependent on Gromit, even to the point of waking him up which requires the dog to push a certain button, triggering a series of Rube Goldberg-style machinery. Let’s just say getting Wallace out of bed to clean himself up and right down to serving him breakfast toast slathered with lots of jams.
Returning director Nick Park, who helms alongside Merlin Crossingham incorporates a timely theme related to one’s over-reliance on technology. This is especially true with Wallace, who doesn’t believe in manual labour. Even as simple as spreading the jam on a piece of toast. Not to mention Gromit begins to feel increasingly distanced from Wallace and guess what, the latter’s tech reliance goes as far as inventing a specific robot designed to pat the dog. This is why Gromit manages to find his own inner peace by doing gardening.
Too bad it doesn’t last long after Wallace shows his dog his latest invention — a gnome-robot helper called Norbot (Reece Shearsmith). He intends to ease Gromit’s daily routine, beginning with the gardening tasks from shearing to trimming with the utmost speed and efficiency. The introduction of Norbot has since become more integral in Wallace, which saddens Gromit even further.
With Norbot becoming so reliable that Wallace’s neighbours subsequently offer to pay him for the gnome-robot to do household chores, it turns out to be perfect timing for Feathers to exact his revenge. Using his wits and a few improvisations, he manages to access the police computer and hack into Norbot’s system, changing his core protocol settings from “Good” to “Evil”. How convenient but anyway, with Norbot’s directive has completely changed, he soon leads an army of gnome-robot clones on a mission to break Feathers out of prison.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl retains the franchise’s distinctly British charm, humour and simplicity with a few bursts of creativity along the way. It helps the movie only runs just 79 minutes, even though I have to admit it does take some time to pick up the pace. Some of the gags feel trite but it’s a good thing that Wallace and Gromit’s chemistry remains intact as always.
Then, there’s the stolid penguin Feathers McGraw who steals the show each time he’s on the screen while Reece Shearsmith has a field day voicing the “good” and “evil” version of Norbot. Peter Kay, who voiced the retiring Chief Inspector Mackintosh and Lauren Patel as the ambitious young police constable Mukherjee both deserve equal mention.
The stop-motion animation is a technical marvel to look at with co-directors Park and Crossingham knowing well when to ramp up Feathers’ revenge angle, particularly during the exhilarating second half before culminating in an action-packed third act — a thrillingly staged, yet hilariously madcap Mission: Impossible-like chase set-piece.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is currently streaming on Netflix.
