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There are all sorts of ways to greet the new year but few seem more sane-making and soul-satisfying than spending time with Wallace and Gromit. It\u2019s been nearly two decades since these stop-motion British delights set off on their first feature-length outing, \u201cWallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit<\/a>.\u201d Much seems the same at 62 West Wallaby Street, where the duo lives in a squat brick house. There, the old-fashioned wallpaper still looks reassuringly faded, and everyday life tends to be quiet when it isn\u2019t a cracking adventure.<\/p>\n For the uninitiated, Wallace is a bald, toothy, eccentric inventor of whirring, beeping gadgets that no one else much wants. He likes toast with his breakfast tea and frets over bills while Gromit peruses the morning paper. Gromit, I should note at this point, is Wallace\u2019s beagle. An infinitely patient good boy with expressively floppy ears and no (visible) mouth, Gromit is more truly Wallace\u2019s helpmate and recurrent savior. Daring and brave, he is a dog of untold talents who enjoys knitting, gardening and reading books like \u201cCrime and Punishment\u201d by Fido Dogstoyevsky. Occasionally, he strolls about on two legs; he\u2019s been known to fly a plane.<\/p>\n Their new movie, \u201cWallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl<\/a>\u201d \u2014 directed by the pair\u2019s creator, Nick Park, in tandem with Merlin Crossingham \u2014 gets down to business crisply. Wallace (voiced by Ben Whitehead) has ramped up his inventing, and the Wallaby Street house now resembles a veritable Rube Goldberg funfair. Wallace is chuffed by his latest creation, a \u201cnifty odd-jobbing robot\u201d in the form of a garden gnome that he calls Norbot (Reece Shearsmith). It looks pretty much like one of the statuettes that has been in their front yard since the first Wallace and Gromit short film (\u201cA Grand Day Out,\u201d 1989), except that this gnome is computer-driven. It\u2019s a creepy, walking, talking, cutting-edge appliance, a Roomba with teeth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Just how sharp those choppers are is part of the fun in \u201cVengeance Most Fowl,\u201d a diverting low-key thriller with Bond-like flourishes that reunites Wallace and Gromit with an old adversary, the villainous mute penguin Feathers McGraw. After Wallace and Gromit helped snare him for a heist in the 1993 short \u201cThe Wrong Trousers,\u201d Feathers was sent to the slammer, in this case a zoo draped in razor wire. There, in classic prison-film style, he keeps fit doing pull-ups \u2014 impressive given that he only has flippers \u2014 and plots a new illegal venture that draws in Wallace, Gromit, Norbot and several constables, Chief Inspector Mackintosh (Peter Kay) and P.C. Mukherjee (Lauren Patel). Bloodless danger ensues, and many jokes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Written by Mark Burton, from a story by him and Park, \u201cVengeance Most Fowl\u201d moves with smooth efficiency from its amusing, shadowy start to gently slapstick finish, propelled by its characters and Park\u2019s customary sweet-and-silly humor. As usual, the movie is chockablock with word play and visual gags, some of which are nearly as stealthy as mice sniffing out pantry cheese (like the line \u201cIncorporating Mad Scientist Monthly\u201d imprinted on the cover of Practical Inventor magazine). Other jokes earn belly laughs, like the moment a wee floofy dog and its walker amble into a brilliantly timed, intricately choreographed chase sequence that demonstrates Park\u2019s debt to immortal screen clowns like Buster Keaton.<\/p>\n As in Wallace and Gromit\u2019s previous entertainments \u2014 and in innumerable films from almost the dawn of cinema \u2014 technology itself remains a leitmotif, here primarily as an endless font of anxious comedy about the contemporary world. Like other Wallace inventions, Norbot is a true machine marvel, from its creepy nutcracker-like mouth to precisely articulated arms and legs. The gnome incarnates its human creator\u2019s desires and dreams as well as Wallace\u2019s follies. Like Frankenstein\u2019s monster and so many of the robots that keep stomping across our big and small screens, Norbot also seems to threaten the very life that it\u2019s meant to help. This being a Wallace and Gromit lark, though, the scares are safely kept in check.<\/p>\n One of the charms of Park\u2019s movies is that they\u2019ve always carried the trace of the human hand, which gives the intrigue involving Norbot a distinctly self-reflexive tang. Stop-motion animation is a labor-intensive process made with three-dimensional objects, which can give the results a powerfully haptic quality. You don\u2019t just watch these characters, you nearly feel them in your hands, like favorite childhood toys. These days, the textures look less pronounced than they did, and Wallace and Gromit also look smoother, less bumpy, pinched and creased. Yet while I don\u2019t remember seeing any fingerprints dotting their forms this time around, the tender care that went into fashioning each of Wallace\u2019s toothy expressions and Gromit\u2019s quizzically raised brow remains palpable. The love, well, that you feel, too.<\/p>\n Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl<\/strong>
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. Watch on Netflix.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n