Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’ on Netflix, the Long-Awaited Return of Our Punning Plasticine Pals

Uh oh. Feathers McGraw is BACK. With – well, he’s back with the subtitle of this movie: Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (now on Netflix). The first W&G outing since 2008 short A Matter of Loaf and Death, and the beloved characters’ first feature-length film since 2005’s Oscar-winning The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Vengeance Most Fowl is a direct sequel to 1993 short short The Wrong Trousers, in which goofball inventor Wallace and his trusty dog pal Gromit thwarted penguin-passing-as-a-chicken Feathers’ attempt to heist a valuable bauble known as the Blue Diamond. As per usual, the film is yet another treat from Aardman Animations, who’ve cornered the market on stop-motion animated depictions of deeply, DEEPLY British-twee whimsy, ranging from W&G to Chicken Run and Shaun the Sheep (with a a handful of said titles also on Netflix). So it’s not a matter of if you’ll laugh, but how long and how hard.

WALLACE AND GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: AS IS NO DOUBT SEARED INTO YOUR MEMORY, the freshly busted Feathers McGraw was incarcerated in the local zoo, and Wallace (Ben Whitehead) and Gromit resumed their lives as, respectively, a scatterbrained inventor and the responsible one who quietly takes charge of everything. But during those 32 years, rather remarkably, nobody aged – and Feathers simmered in his grubby enclosure, doing Cape Fear pullups and plotting, plotting, plotting. Oh boy. 

Things aren’t so great for Wallace, whose inventing isn’t paying the bills these days. So he builds a “smart gnome” named Norbot (Reece Shearsmith, voicing with a hint of 2001’s Douglas Rain), programmed to help people with their household projects, e.g., gardening, as Wallace demonstrates the robot’s capabilities by having it transform Gromit’s beloved and lushly bountiful flower garden into an overtrimmed collection of geometric-shaped shrubberies. The dog is unamused. And even more so when he begins to worry that Wallace prefers Norbot to his loyal and trustworthy pooch.

MEANWHILE. Feathers finds a way to remotely hack Norbot – how? What with one thing and another, of course – switching it from its benevolent setting to “EVIL.” Remember how Bart Simpson’s Krusty doll had a similar switch? Why do these things always have an EVIL setting? Because cartoons, smartass, that’s why. Anyway, Norbot gets to building an army of Norbots that’ll bust Feathers outta the clink so he can exact insert title of movie here, while the hapless police chief (Peter Kay) and his responsible human underling (Lauren Patel) contemplate arresting the hapless Wallace and his responsible dog underling for the crimes. Will Wallace cease napping long enough to get a clue as to what’s going on? Will Gromit once again do what it takes to save the day? NO SPOILERS, CHEESEMONGERS.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Don’t overlook the obvious Aliens reference, or the clear-as-crystal James Bond references, or the more open-for-interpretation scene that I saw as a Mission: Impossible reference. 

Performance Worth Watching: The animators’ ability to milk Feathers’ bland inexpressiveness for comedy is absolutely on point. 

Memorable Dialogue: [Gromit rolls his eyes]

Sex and Skin: A couple of brief glimpses of Wallace’s fanny during bathtime. 

Our Take: Puns! They’re among the constants of the W&G universe, along with the classic Wallace-and-Gromit doofus-and-dog comic dynamic and the always-inspired fingerprints-in-the-clay handmade visual aesthetic. This has been a winning formula since 1989, so why futz with it? We were tickled then, and we’re still tickled now, even as directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham, and writer Mark Burton, butt their timeless approach up against modern existential fears with a gentle elbow-in-the-ribs satire of AI-takeover plots. Havoc-wreaking garden-gnome automatons? How has no one thought of that yet? Probably because it wouldn’t be nearly as inspired outside a typically meticulously crafted Aardman setting, where whimsy is king and nobody’s trying too hard to be funny. Everything simply is funny.

Honestly, there are no real surprises in Vengeance Most Fowl – it’s comforting in its consistency, and as we should expect, some of these laughs are huge. HUGE, I tell you, HUGE. We find ourselves in the thick of Sight Gag City, where “reboot” is a ridiculously literal action and the citizenry is easily fooled into believing a penguin with a red rubber glove on his head is actually a chicken. The inspirations are Looney Tunes and Laurel and Hardy, the plotting is tight and Swiss-watch intricate and you can practically taste the tweed. Asking for anything more from this winning formula would be a fool’s folly. This second goosechase for the Blue Diamond is another Aardman gem.

Our Call: Wallace and STREAMIT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.