Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) begins with a new Wallace invention: a smart garden gnome that does the work. It does not like Gromit. Then the invention is hacked and turned against Wallace, by a penguin in prison. Feathers McGraw is back. The character first appeared in The Wrong Trousers in 1993, so he returns for revenge thirty one years later. He is after the pair for ruining the Blue Diamond theft, and he does not say a word for the entire film. Peter Sallis died in 2017. Wallace is now voiced by Ben Whitehead, who had played him in games and commercials but never in a feature. Nick Park co directed with Merlin Crossingham. Park had first designed it as a thirty minute short before it grew into a feature. An unexpected problem hit production: in March 2023 the clay supplier shut down. Aardman bought the remaining stock in order to finish. It screened at the American Film Institute on 27 October 2024, aired on BBC One on Christmas Day 2024, and reached Netflix on 3 January 2025. After twenty eight days of catch up viewing it became the BBC's most watched scripted programme since 2002. It won BAFTAs for Best Animated Film and Best Children's and Family Film and was nominated for an Academy Award. It runs 79 minutes. Good for: stop motion, British humour, and followers of the series. Less good for: Feathers McGraw was sharper in the first film and some scenes here are trying to reproduce that effect. The artificial intelligence theme is treated shallowly. Without the series the weight of the nostalgia does not land.