It feels a little silly expounding on a metaphor when we’re talking about a 79-minute Wallace & Gromit feature, but Vengeance Most Fowl has laid one out like cheese in a mousetrap. The triumphant return of two Northern icons – the cheddar-fixated, genius inventor Wallace (Ben Whitehead, who took over from Peter Sallis after his death in 2017) and his mute, downtrodden canine companion Gromit – sees the pair face the most topical of foes: an AI gnome, or Norbot (voiced by Reece Shearsmith), invented by Wallace as a way to further automate his life.
The lesson here is that while technology has its place and its advantages, “there are some things a machine just can’t do”. That may as well be the motto of Aardman Animations, the makers of Wallace and Gromit, who have stuck by stop-motion in an industry obsessed with the latest gadgets and gizmos.
