Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl review — A banquet of jokes with storytelling as audacious as ever ...Middle East

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Reassuringly, not much has changed in the world of Wallace & Gromit since we watched them wrestling with A Matter Of Loaf And Death in 2008. They’re still living a life that revolves round the former’s “cracking” contraptions, and it will come as no surprise to viewers when, once again, the inventor’s handiwork lands our heroes in hot water.

On that bedrock of familiarity and tradition, they embark on only their second feature-length adventure, filled to the brim with laughs, jeopardy, outrageously creative physical comedy, and supporting characters who provide much more than window dressing.

Significantly, there’s the return of Feathers McGraw, the duo’s dastardly avian nemesis, incarceratred in a high-security zoo at the close of 1993’s The Wrong Trousers – an early scene here references jailbird Robert De Niro in Cape Fear, one of a slew of pop culture sight gags throughout (keep your eyes peeled for nods to Captain Nemo, The Flintstones, and local TV presenter “Anton Deck”).

Wallace’s new moneyspinner is an automated garden gnome called Norbot, a relentlessly upbeat, workaholic little fellow (voiced by Reece Shearsmith) and the cornerstone of West Wallaby Street’s latest business, Gnome Improvements, capable of landscaping an entire back yard in a matter of minutes.

Sensing an opportunity, Feathers concocts a fiendish plan from his cell by hacking into Wallace’s cumbersome basement computer system, and mass-replicating Norbot (switched to an altogether more evil setting) until he has a veritable army to do his villainous bidding.

The endgame is to stage another heist to steal the Blue Diamond he nearly got away with when first battling man and dog, but not before masterminding a gnome-perpretrated crimewave which, inevitably, is blamed on Norbot’s creator.

It’s an open-and-shut case in the eyes of Peter Kay’s Chief Inspector Mackintosh (a meteoric rise through the ranks for the lowly constable from The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005), but his eager young protege PC Mukherjee (Lauren Patel) suspects something more sinister is afoot. It’s up to her and the ever resourceful Gromit to uncover the truth, as well as springing the bewildered Wallace from custody.

There’s a lot going on, certainly more than could have been comfortably shoehorned into the pair’s previous 30-minute outings, and the intricate plot is noticeably better paced than the other feature in the series, Were-Rabbit.

Originator Nick Park and Ardman Animations exhibit a much firmer grip on the necessities of the lengthier format, likely honed during the making of Shaun The Sheep cinema releases in 2015 and ‘19, to deliver knockabout, white-knuckle thrills aplently without sacrificing any of the characters’ innate, homespun charm.

Preserving the spirit and personality of what went before is especially key in the passing of the baton to voice Wallace from the late Peter Sallis to Ben Whitehead, no stranger to the role courtesy of several video games stretching back to 2009.

Even the most finely-tuned pair of ears would struggle to register any tangible difference, such is the skill with which Whitehead nails the enthusiasm, exasperation or more intimate traits of the character – essential, given the importance of how Wallace reacts to the mayhem swirling around him.

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If a tiny handful of one-liners feel lazy and don’t quite hit their mark, there is nonetheless a hearty banquet of top-drawer jokes in Mark Burton’s script (with an additional material credit for comedians Holly Walsh and Barunka O’Shaughnessy) to keep things ticking along.

The sets and situations are as audacious as ever, affording the characters show-stopping backdrops that liberally borrow from Tex Avery cartoons, Hitchcock thrillers and all points between – no mean feat for a film resolutely rooted in the quaintness of stop-motion.

Computer graphic trickery is kept to an absolute bare minimum, because the strength with which Ardman have assembled and established this particular universe means it’s not needed. Whatever the advances in technology may have been since we last saw them, Wallace & Gromit are still big cheeses.

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