It's a cracking film, Gromit

Today was time to catch up with Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the new stop motion adventure of the inventor and his faithful (if frequently exasperated) hound from Aardman Animations, directed by the legend that is Nick Park, together this time with Merlin Crossingham.

A sequel to the duo’s second outing – the Oscar-winning The Wrong Trousers in 1993 – it sees the return of penguin arch villain Feathers McGraw, who (spoiler alert) has not been rehabilitated by his time inside the local zoo/prison.

In the meantime, Wallace has come up with an AI garden gnome, Norbot – initially with the intention of it helping Gromit in his beloved garden. But as with all of Wallace’s inventions, what starts out with the best intentions has a tendency to go awry.

And as Wallace becomes ever more enamoured of his new creation, Gromit’s nose is pushed out of joint – reminiscent of The Wrong Trousers – when the perpetually broke inventor unwittingly accepted Feathers as a lodger.

With a screenplay by Mark Burton, Vengeance Most Fowl is a 79-minute delight, jam-packed with gags – watch out for a brilliant visual reference to an iconic Bond villain, but there are many, many more.

It also gently points out the problems that modern technology can create – so apt that the film itself is hand-made animation and not CGI.

The northernness of it all is a joy – there’s even a local newspaper article on the Lancashire references in it.

Ben Whitehead proves wonderful as the ‘new’ voice of Wallace. He’s voiced Wallace in games and stuff before, but this was his first major time in the role for a film since the original voice of the inventor Peter Sallis retired in 2010.

Reece Shearsmith is suitably creepy as Norbot, while Peter Kaye reprises his voice role as over-promoted but not very bright copper Albert Mackintosh, who first appeared in Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Lauren Patel is very good as PC Mukherjee, who – even new out of training – seems to have a much better idea of proper coppering.

All in all, this is an absolute delight. No wonder it’s already picking up award nominations. And personally, I’ll be watching again, because there is no way I can have seen and registered all the gags! I suggest you get started now.

PS: A special mention for the mainstream critic who notes (in an otherwise very positive review) that: "only a pedant would complain that penguins aren’t "fowl" as such" ... well no. But Feathers uses a red rubber glove on his head to disguise himself as a chicken. And guess what ... chickens are fowl.