Reviews: Review of “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance is served with feathers” (“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl”), film by Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham (Netflix)

After The battle of the vegetables (2005), the duo made up of the optimistic inventor and his faithful beagle dog return with another notable feature film with the seal of the Aardman factory.

Wallace and Gromit are already an undisputed cinema classic at this point. In 35 years they have appeared in dozens of shorts and a couple of feature films that the Aardman company with Nick Park and Peter Lord at the helm have taken to the artistic heights of stop-motion animation (frame by frame).

On social network X (ex Twitter), I wrote: “After the 'perfect' animation of Mufasa: The Lion Kingwhich seems like an accumulation of images made with Artificial Intelligence, how beautiful it is to enjoy the 'imperfection' of Wallace & Gromit: Revenge is served with feathers”. It's not that Mufasa It may be a bad movie, but for those of us who grew up appreciating much more artisanal animation, Wallace and Gromit emerge almost as an act of resistance, almost countercultural.

And it is not only an opposition between techniques (in fact, Aardman has increasingly resorted to digital resources to reduce time and reduce costs) but also a way of approaching the characters and their stories. While Disney bets on spectacularity and epicness, Aardman continues to use a much more earthly, friendly and even innocent tone.

Wallace (the unmistakable voice of Ben Whitehead since he replaced the late Peter Sallis) remains as well-intentioned and optimistic as ever, living with Gromit surrounded by his thousand and one inventions that allow him to get up, have breakfast, wash up and get dressed with the push of a button. a few buttons. His latest creation is Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), a dwarf robot who is basically impeccable at tasks like maintaining the garden. However, Gromit sees him not only as competition in his daily tasks but also as someone who takes away his attention and the love of his owner.

But the film would not be the action-packed comedy that it is without the return as antagonist of the penguin Feathers McGraw, the arch-villain whom we see serving time in prison (actually in a zoo) precisely thanks to Wallace and Gromit thwarting his plans. . Everything served, then, for the revenge to which the title alludes.

With a light but never frenetic pace, with notable secondary characters and a creativity that at this point seems inexhaustible both for the conception of the scenes in general and for the smallest detail, the 76 net minutes of Revenge is served with feathers They are pure delight. They may not reach the genius of the best works of the Wallace and Gromit franchise or other feature films from the Aardman studio such as Chicks on the run y Shaun the lambbut enjoyment is always assured. An excellent opportunity to start 2025 as a movie buff in the best way.

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