WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL Review: They're Back and Better Than Ever

Nostalgia can kick you in the head. Or warm your heart.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
The film releases on Netflix globally (except in the UK/IE) on January 3, 2025.

I have never laughed so hard and so continuously as I did during the train chase scene in The Wrong Trousers.

Early in the 1990s, friends in New York started telling me about the Wallace & Gromit short films, which were available to watch here in the States via public broadcaster PBS on an occasional schedule. When I finally got to watch them (in order, of course), I enjoyed A Grand Day Out, but The Wrong Trousers, featuring the villainous diamond thief Feathers McGraw, made me a die-hard fan, which continued through A Close Shave.

Their first feature-length film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), prompted a review by Todd Brown, this site's founder and editor, who wrote in part: "The film is absolutely fantastic from beginning to end and isolating any one thing that makes it so is well nigh impossible. Wallace and Gromit, you see, doesn't work because of any one particular moment, or gag, or approach but because of the way all of the elements fit together so incredibly well, so flawlessly, to create an all-encompassing world."

Reading Todd's review again after watching Vengeance Most Fowl, starring Wallace and Gromit, made me think hard about nostalgia. Three decades of reflection have not diminished my love for Ardman's past masterful work with the characters, and I have long since arrived at a point where I don't care what anybody else says or writes about this movie, which is absolutely fantastic, to borrow Todd's descriptive phrase.

Vengeance Most Fowl picks up where The Wrong Trousers left off, with mute penguin Feathers McGraw locked up behind bars, where he belongs, but already plotting his revenge against bumbling Wallace and silent Gromit.

Now voiced by Ben Whitehead, since original Wallace voice Peter Sallis passed away in 2010, the "new" Wallace sounds very much like the old Wallace. (Whitehead's voice can also be heard in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and A Matter of Loaf and Death, as well as various Wallace & Gromit video games.) Whitehead captures the character nuances that Sallis brought to the endless inventive, perpetually positive Wallace.

Since the bakery business folded after A Matter of Loaf and Death, Gromit is keenly aware that Wallace's continuing inventions are not able to keep up with the bills. Wallace's latest invention is a so-called "smart" gnome -- similar to a gnome glimpsed briefly in a neighbor's garden in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit -- which becomes an instant sensation after Wallace demonstrates it in his own backyard, much to Gromit's dismay.

The neighbors, all peeking over their fences, are amazed, however, and all want to hire Norbot, the gnome, which prompts Wallace to establish a new business, which is a hit with the neighbors. That is, until Feathers McGraw catches wind and devises a devious plan to transform the smart gnome into an Agent of Destruction -- and to make many more gnomes, too!

Having watched all the shorts and features multiple times, what strikes me about the latest is that it celebrates the brilliance of invention, while simultaneously warning about the dangers involved in plowing forth without due consideration. It's that wise caution that feels very British to me -- and I hope that doesn't sound reductive, because that's not what I mean. I mean that in the best sense possible: yes, yes, we're going to do this or that, but for heaven's sake, let's also think about and plan for unexpected elements, like a penguin disguised as a chicken.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is very, very funny, and marks a welcome return for the beloved friends to the biggest screen possible, even if that's only in your home. Come to think of it, they fit very well at home, since home is where the heart is, and also where most accidents happen.

And it's where Wallace and his dear friend Gromit can settle in, relax, and think up brilliant new inventions and how to deal with them.