BEFORE: I just recorded the new "Now You See Me" movie, I worked at the NYC premiere screening last November, and all of the major stars turned up. So I definitely have my problems with that movie franchise, but also I kind of want to fast-track that one, because I was there at the premiere event. I noticed that I COULD watch that film tonight, instead of the Wallace & Gromit film, because Isla Fisher could easily be the bridge between "Burke & Hare" and tomorrow's film. Also, the "Now You See Me" movie missed out on being in the Jesse Eisenberg chain in late January - however I've got to skip it for a SECOND time, because the linking on today's film is so unlikely, so fragile that I can't skip this one. Today's film only links to TWO other films on my list, so I've got to watch it here, or risk not being able to watch it at all, ever.
Reece Shearsmith carries over from "Burke and Hare". You know what, "Now You See Me 3" is going to be fine, it links to a lot of other movies. I'll get it back into the line-up as soon as I can, sometime after "Jurassic World" and "One Battle After Another" and "Zootopia 2" and "Wake Up Dead Man". I mean, a guy's got to have his priorities in order, right?
THE PLOT: Gromit springs into action to save his master when Wallace's high-tech invention goes rogue and he is framed for a series of suspicious crimes.
AFTER: Jeez, how long has it been since the last "Wallace & Gromit" feature, could it be 20 years? How the hell does that happen? I remember when those short films "The Wrong Trousers" and "A Close Shave" came out, it was a big deal and then the feature film, "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit", well, it was fine. All that was BEFORE I started my blog in 2009, so there's nothing to follow up here, because I saw all the previous W&G films long ago. You couldn't really call yourself an animation fan back then if you weren't current on this franchise.
God, this new feature is SO good and it works on so many different levels - there's a big warning here about A.I. because that's really what most filmmakers are afraid of these days, losing their jobs to a system that is completely artificial, like the goal is to have no humans involved in the very silly art of making movies, other than the people who read prompts into a microphone or push a couple buttons to make a movie. I guess the people who have coding jobs will be fine, but I definitely feel like I got off of the sinking ship that is independent animation just before the iceberg hit. Meanwhile, the production of a stop-motion feature like "Vengeance Most Fowl" is exactly the opposite, it's slow, labor-intensive and human oriented. Maybe it took a crew of people 20 years to make this movie, Del Toro's crew certainly worked on "Pinocchio" for a very long time.
The A.I. here is represented by a robotic garden gnome, called a Norbot, that Wallace invented to do gardening work. However he gave it some form of sentience, so it can make decisions about the shapes of topiaries, and what tools to use to cut grass, and so on. Gromit doesn't like the Norbot from the start because of course it destroys the plant he JUST put in the ground, and also almost cuts his toes off with an edging device. Gromit is 100% correct to be wary, because anything with an A.I. system can be corrupted, and the notorious criminal penguin, Feathers McGraw, is working on accessing Wallace's computer files, he just needs to keep guessing passwords, and that's not hard. Once he gets it right, it's just a matter of switching the Norbot's programming from "Good" to "Evil" (there are lots of shades in-between, like dull and grumpy, that's all part of the fun, but let's focus on just good and evil.)
The now-evil Norbot goes immediately to work, building MORE evil Norbots. Sure, why not give a robot the ability to reproduce itself, what could POSSIBLY go wrong there? While we're at it, why not make "evil" one of its potential character traits? Wallace, what was the plan here? Like if you didn't want the robots to be evil, why program that as a potential character trait? We need to treat this animated film as a template for the future, in addition to the robotic rules about never harming humans and always obeying human commands, we should think about adding in a rule about robots never building more robots, OK? The other obvious warning sign about A.I. is that no matter what your intent was when you BUILT the robots, they can always be hacked at some point in the future by people with bad intent, and so we have to know NOW to pre-plan for this.
The notorious criminal "Feathers" McGraw was playing the long game here, in his quest for the famous Blue Diamond. In between scenes during "The Wrong Trousers", he apparently swapped it for a turnip and so they put a root vegetable in a sack back in the vault, while he hid the real diamond inside Wallace's house. Then he surrendered himself to years in "prison" (a zoo) and waited for robot technology to advance to the point where he could use it to get his revenge AND the diamond.
The whole last third of "Vengeance Most Fowl" is a giant chase scene, and I know how hard it is to keep your animated feature from going in this direction - of the three animated features I produced, I think they all turned into chase scenes in the final third. But at least they did a really GOOD one here, there's one part that calls to mind the train crash scene from "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning", I mean it's a boat and not a train but the principle is the same. (I didn't know there were aqueducts, or "boat bridges" in the U.K., similar to train bridges. They're probably bending reality here just a bit to pay homage to the Tom Cruise action film...)
It's OK if you have a GREAT chase scene, though, and this one is pretty crackin' good. But you can tell that this story was initially designed to be a 30-minute short, and then it got expanded to 79 minutes, so that's where a chase scene comes in, you can make one of those as long as you want, just keep adding more scenes, more obstacles and additional vehicles. Some really good gags, too, like Wallace decided to "reboot" the robots by hitting them on the back with actual boots. Wellingtons, of course, but it's a powerful visual pun.
Directed by Merlin Crossingham, Nick Park (director of "Early Man" and producer on "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget")
Also starring the voices of Ben Whitehead (last heard in "The Pirates! Band of Misfits"), Peter Kay (last seen in "24 Hour Party People"), Lauren Patel, Diane Morgan, Adjoa Andoh (last seen in "Invictus"), Muzz Khan (last seen in "Wonka"), Lenny Henry (also last heard in "The Pirates! Band of Misfits"), John Sparkes (last heard in "A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon"), Maya Sondhi
RATING: 8 out of 10 pieces of toast getting jam on them in mid-air
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