The world’s scariest penguin returns

All family movies, even weird stop-motion movies, require a good villain. And Feathers McGraw has had one in the Wallace and Gromit series for many years. McGraw is a penguin with all the facial expressions of Jason Statham except for his eyebrows, but here he’s downright terrifying. Revenge Most Chickensfirst full length Wallace and Gromit A feature that emerged in 19 years.

This career criminal is a master of disguise. If you put a red rubber glove on his head, he is a chicken to all the world; Wrap her in a kitchen towel and she’ll be mistaken for a helpful nun. It’s perfect for him to act as the arch-enemies of this duo who never melt in their mouths. Rarely have beady eyes been used in a better way.

Since their first outing in 1989 A Great Day OutWallace and Gromit proved to be unlikely giants of cinema; They were nominated for five Oscars, including Best Animated Short and Best Animated Feature, and won three. Actually, Nick Park and production team at Aardman’s A deceptively simple series about an eccentric inventor and his gloomy beagle shouldn’t really work in the modern age – and certainly not when compared to the world of Disney and Pixar, where everything is bigger, brasher and louder – but two, sweet and British movies certainly It continues to be a pleasure.

All media Revenge Most Chickens This can be inferred from its fancy title, because here is a script that never knowingly avoids it. At one point, in a subplot revolving around a particular root vegetable, Wallace (now voiced by Ben Whitehead following Peter Sallis’ death in 2017) says: “That’s a turnip for the books.”

The film begins with the ageless inventor at his unattractive West Wallaby Street home, ignoring his mounting electricity bills to work uninterruptedly on the mechanical creations that wake him up in the morning, dress him, feed him and even pet his dog. in his name. His latest innovation is the “smart dwarf” he calls Norbot; is a garden gnome programmed to do all the tedious and tedious tasks that people complain about the most. Norbot is not programmed to complain; For him, “no job is too small”.

And so poor Gromit, who manages his ongoing existential exhaustion by repotting his outdoor plants through meditation, suddenly finds himself surplus to requirements. Soon the dwarf took over every chore: gardening, laundry, sweeping the hallway. “It’s the technology that matters,” says Wallace, a 1950s Yorkshireman who somehow found himself in the 21st century.^st century. Gromit’s response was a quiet, loaded groan. His ears are lame.

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When we first see Feathers McGraw, he is in an animal prison (zoo) and still holds a grudge against this couple. Wrong Pants. So when has incarceration ever hindered a movie villain? From behind bars, he manages to access a computer to infiltrate the dwarf’s mainframe – don’t ask, it’s complicated – thus turning Norbot from “good” to “evil”. Suddenly Norbot multiplied, there were dozens of him, and each one turned to the dark side. They help free McGraw and it’s basically mayhem from there.

Wallace’s neighbors, who previously admired Norbot, now turn on him as his robot army rebels and attacks. A not-so-subtle critique of big tech and the scientists who create it? Of course yes. The chaos allows Peter Kay to have a lot of fun as the bumbling Chief Inspector Mackintosh, while the thrilling canal boat chase rivals anything James Bond has to offer, even at four miles per hour.

They’re all gorgeous, silly things, visual delights for kids and exquisite details for adults. When the Norbots’ antics make the local news, the TV reporter’s name is Anton Deck, and when Gromit is distracted from the madness, we see him in bed reading a book. A Room of One’s Own Written by Virginia Woolf.

Revenge Most Chickens It took more than a decade to build, and it was all laborious. It was time well spent. There is a genius here.

‘Wallace and Gromit: Revenge of the Most Fowl’ will be shown on BBC One on Christmas Day