The Wallace & Grommit shorts and films are some of the funniest, most colourful and creative animated stories out there - absolutely crammed to the gills with of bad puns, quaint English humour and warm-hearted satire. If you've seen any of them, you know what to expect. If you haven't, you're in for a treat: Start out with the original shorts and go up from there. They're all at the very least delightful.
This one is not Aardman at the top of their game, but even a weak Wallace & Grommit outing is a good egg. Series creator Nick Park returns as a writer/director, with co-director Merlin Crossingham and co-writer Mark Burton. It's the first film without Peter Sallis as the voice of Wallace, but replacement Ben Whitehead does a good enough job that I never noticed. Joining him are Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith and Diane Morgan (Cunk herself!) with characters old and new. But the main draws are voiceless: Grommit, the most long-suffering dog in all of England... and Feathers McGraw, masterminding a new heist after being being incarcerated at the end of The Wrong Trousers more than thirty years ago. It feels like cheap bid to invoke nostalgia, but I can't argue with the results.
The plot is serviceable, a collection of silly events that serves more as a joke dispensing machine than anything else - the quality of the humour is variable (I wasn't a fan of most of the police scenes) but there are some very good conceits in here (the use of a James Bond-style musical sting is alone worth the price of admission) and as usual there are some fine potshots at quintessentially English cultural touchstones - chief among them a hilarious, climactic long boat chase.
It should go without saying that it's a technical marvel. Aardman can really make stop-motion sing.
There's not a lot to dissect here - it's Wallace & Grommit, innit? Seriously, just go watch them all already.
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