After three shorts, a full feature and the greatest novelty mug to ever exist, Wallace & Gromit returns to screens, and it's going post-industrial with an AI-powered lawn gnome. Wallace & Gromit has always been about technology and the supposed British identity, but Vengeance Most Fowl understands that it's not the gadget itself that can be the cause for concern — it's how it's used. A rare legacy sequel that captures the original's spirit while not resting too comfortably on its laurels, the latest romp of an eccentric inventor and his dog is a delightfully referential film that never grows dull.
Picking up where the 1993 short The Wrong Trousers left off — the one that introduced audiences to one of cinema's most dastardly villains, chicken penguin Feathers McGraw — Vengeance Most Fowl sees its antagonist locked up indefinitely for his crimes in what can be described as a prison for animals: the zoo. Meanwhile, Wallace (Ben Whitehead) and Gromit continue to enjoy their hyper-efficient lifestyle thanks to Wallace's Rube Golberg-like inventions that render getting ready in the morning into a zany assembly line. Those moments speak to the franchise's strengths, embodying a childlike idea of how technology can make life less mundane in fantastical ways.
But as always, and despite Gromit's apprehensions, Wallace's good intentions bring disaster. He builds Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), an AI-powered lawn gnome that turns Gromit's sanctuary of a garden into the botanical equivalent of a McMansion. Startingly characterless in its appearance, it's an accurate portrayal of how AI operates: an amalgamation of data that often results in sanitized, characterless images. It's the lowest common denominator, desperate to please and come out on top. Norbot has a good mechanical heart, but it's not enough.
After seeing Wallace on the telly, McGraw seizes control of Norbot through his own mechanical means and tarnishes Wallace's reputation through Norbot's actions. It's again up to Gromit to fix what's broken, and during his quest to clear Wallace's name while a fresh army of robotic gnomes raid the gardens adjacent to their abode on West Wallaby Street, the references made (by Aardman Animations and screenwriter Mark Burton and not a gnome running off perhaps stolen data) make for near-perfect moments.
Gromit, after being once again overlooked by Wallace and quietly frustrated, sits in his bed, reading Virginia Woof's A Room of One's Own. A stack of records sits near his bedside — "Walkies on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed at the top. Vengeance Most Fowl is rife with this sort of gag, as referential puns and wordplay abound. Seeing Wallace & Gromit pay tribute to The Matrix is an incredible surprise, speaking to a new generation of audience moulded by digital culture.
A well-oiled machine of a movie sitting at a comfy 79 minutes, there's no excuse to check out the latest outing from Britain's most upstanding citizens. Vengeance Most Fowl's tongue-in-cheek moments will make children giggle and everyone else guffaw.