Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)

dir Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham

If all I had to show for my life’s work was even just one singular Wallace & Gromit film, alas, I could die not just happy, but proud.

I can’t even roll my eyes at the idea of a Netflix original movie, for my eyes are too busy alternating between joyous crinkles- this shit is so good! Classic comedy! Oh it’s good to be a human being who is ALIVE!- and small, sniveling tears. Is this really it? Is it all over? Did we really use up the last of the clay? Wax? Play-dough? Whatever plasticky pseudo-goop they use for these chicken films.

PAUSE…

I just looked this up, partly to fact check before I shared this tragedy with the world, but also out of hope. What if they made more clay? Found more? Invented a substitute that was so much better than the original that we all felt a little foolish and couldn’t help but chuckle?

I know I’m not crazy. I KNOW I remember hearing/reading/talking about the news that this would be the last Wallace & Gromit production due to supply shortages. Something about Covid? Climate change? Clay-theft? One of those evil C’s. But now, I stand here before you with egg all over my face.

Google says nothing of the sort. In fact, everything I could find on the first page of search results reassured me that there will be more to follow, and that they will always stick to original stop motion even in a modern world full of CGI. Well, damn. I won’t question too heavily. This is a good thing, after all. Hallelujah! We’re promised more hijinks with the bald man and his goofy mutt (a classic genre- see Charlie Brown & Snoopy).

Is this as perfect a masterpiece as The Curse of the Were Rabbit? Perhaps not, but I’m seriously so happy to watch a film take a firm, obvious, public stance against AI. Gromit is so real for hating those gnomes. Fuck those creepy gnomes! I unironically wish Ira Levin were alive to watch this. Gromit really channels Rosemary Woodhouse and Joanna Eberhart when he has to watch the gnomes play out horrors before his eyes, and then hear everyone sing their praises. Or maybe it’s just reminiscent of Candace from Phineas and Ferb. A timeless feminist trope. Perhaps Gromit is a sort of woman in this universe.

Fascinating.

Watching a scene between Gromit and Feathers McGraw is so uncanny because there is no acting here… these are real hunks of clay-wax-glue-plastic fighting each other with zero dialogue. No actors behind this. No names billed in the credits. So totally odd. I will say, there is something so timeless, so genius about a silent villain.

PAUSE (again)…

WHY did this film take a harsh turn towards AI apologia at the end? Did I miss something? Am I hallucinating? Am I OK?

This really IS an Ira Levin tale! Wallace is putting his poor mate Gromit through psychological torture! READER, BEWARE- this is a HORROR movie!

I can only assume there was an original ending that made way more sense until Netflix or the BBC or whoever funded this thing watched it and was like “Hey so we absolutely cannot take a firm, obvious, public stance against AI. Please rewrite the ending.”

The message I’m choosing to take away from this: AI will make us dumber, the world worse, and allow villains to get away with more evil. We need good ol’ fashioned creative IDIOTS to save the day!

Okay, now why did this remind me so much of The 39 Steps? Hey, Hitchcock, how have you been girl…