Wallace and Gromit

In the very first Wallace and Gromit short, A Grand Day Out (1989), Wallace and Gromit have built a rocketship to go to the moon and get some cheese.  There is a wonderful moment in which the rocket ignites, engulfing the basement in fiery light.  A cluster of spectator rats simultaneously don sunglasses.  The rocket shakes and rattles but doesn’t launch.  Realizing his mistake, Gromit releases the parking brake and off they go.  The tension, excitement and humor of this little scene belies the fact that this is stop-motion animation.  The characters are figures made of plasticine on wire armature.  The action is accomplished by moving them ever so slightly for each frame – at twenty-four frames per second.  No wonder A Grand Day Out took six years to complete!

Wallace and Gromit are the stars of four British animated shorts and one feature film.  Wallace is an optimistic and inventive Englishman who loves the simple life and cheese.  He usually wears a white shirt, green pullover sweater, and red tie and has a wide mouth of white teeth.  Wallace speaks in a crisp Yorkshire accent provided by Peter Sallis.  Gromit is Wallace’s highly intelligent and long-suffering dog.  He doesn’t speak (either because he is a dog or because he has no mouth) but communicates quite effectively with his eyes and forehead.   While he can’t speak, we know he can read since he has been seen studying ‘Electronic for Dogs’ and ‘Pluto’s Republic’.  Wallace and Gromit live together in a cozy house filled with Wallace’s inventions.  Wallace’s kind and naive heart always gets them into trouble but Gromit’s brains and resourcefulness invariably gets them out.

A Grand Day Out

The Wallace and Gromit shorts are the creation of English film-maker Nick Park, who began A Grand Day Out in 1982 as his graduate project at the National Film and Television School.  Given that stop-motion animation is extremely time-intensive, the project was still incomplete when he graduated.  He got a job with Aardman Animation where he created some exceptional commercials but all the while continued to work on his pet project.  Finally in 1989, A Grand Day Out was released to wide-spread acclaim.  It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short but lost to Creature Comforts (1989), also made by Park at Aardman.  In the film, after the eventful launch described above, Wallace and Gromit have a picnic on the moon. They encounter a stove-like “cooker” who wants to return to earth with them so he can learn to ski.

The Wrong Trousers

Two W&G shorts followed: The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995).  Both films won the Best Animated Short Academy Award.  In The Wrong Trousers, Wallace takes on a boarder: a suspicious penguin who turns out to be a jewel thief.   The thief uses Wallace’s robotic dog walker to steal an enormous diamond.  Fortunately, Gromit is on to him, resulting in a wild chase-scene finale.   The Wrong Trousers has hysterical sight-gags, remarkable suspense (particularly during the robbery) and even some pathos when Gromit leaves home.  A Close Shave involves a stray sheep named Shaun, a porridge-shooting machine, and a sheep-rustling dog named Preston.  Preston’s owner Wendolene Ramsbottom is Wallace’s first love interest (although this is quickly ended when he learns that she can’t stand cheese).  When Preston frames Gromit for the thefts, Gromit is thrown in prison for life (where he reads Crime and Punishment by Fido Dogstoyevsky.)  Wallace and Shaun rescue Gromit but Wendolene is kidnapped by Preston, resulting in a wild chase-scene finale.

Park gave W&G a rest while he made Chicken Run (2000), but they returned in Cracking Contraptions (2002), a series of ten 2-1/2 minute shorts.  These were merely a warm-up for the first full-length W&G feature film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).  To protect the giant vegetables being grown for the village vegetable growing competition, Wallace and Gromit have started a humane rabbit-collection business called Anti-Pesto.  In a failed attempt to brainwash the captured bunnies, one rabbit is momentarily fused to Wallace’s head.  Soon a giant Were-rabbit is terrorizing the village; no vegetable is safe.  After several hilarious, antic scenes, Gromit discovers the identity of the were-rabbit in the nick of time.

A Matter of Loaf and Death

A Matter of Loaf and Death, the fourth W&G short, was first shown on British television on Christmas Day 2008.  In this murder mystery, Wallace and Gromit solve a serial baker killing spree.  Their ‘Dough to Door’ delivery service delivers bread from their ‘Top Bun’ bakery.  Wallace falls for a former pin-up girl, Piella Bakewell while Gromit falls for her dog Fluffles.  During the whirlwind romance, Gromit discovers that Piella is the ‘cereal killer’ and her next victim is Wallace.  A Matter of Loaf and Death was nominated for the Best Animated Short Oscar but did not win.

While the puns and parodies have gotten thicker over the years, the stop-action animation has become more sophisticated and ingenious.  In the early W&G shorts, things fly through the air, tea pours from tea kettles, and Gromit can communicate entire sentences with a slight tic of his brow.  By A Close Shave, there are flying machines, soap bubbles, and pyramids of sheep, all with unique expressions.  The Curse of the Were-Rabbit has shots with huge numbers of moving elements.  All this is done by the animators at a rate of about 30 frames per day.   One can always count on Wallace and Gromit for a fun, entertaining story full of cute characters and silly inventions.  But it is the sheer genius of the stop-animation magic that truly astonishes.

U.K. Holiday Stamp

Meantime, Wallace and Gromit make regular appearances outside the film world. The duo was in a series of BBC2 ‘idents’ (station identification, to us yanks) cavorting with a giant ‘2’.  They have starred in several video games over the years.  They prevented the demise of a Wensleydale cheese factory when they were used as its mascots.  They hosted an exhibit at London’s Science Museum entitled ‘Wallace & Gromit present a World of Cracking Ideas’.  They were featured on an English Christmas stamps series in 2010.  There are even plans for a Wallace and Gromit theme park ride in Blackpool.  The boys have gone from graduation project, to movie stars, to Academy Award winners, to cultural icons - not bad for a couple of lumps of clay.

Question of the Day: What is your favorite scene from any of the W&G movies?