Every Wallace & Gromit Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

Every Wallace & Gromit Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

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Since A Grand Day Out in 1989, Wallace and Gromit have become household names: here’s every film starring the iconic duo, ranked from worst to best.

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Every Wallace & Gromit Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

Since A Grand Day Out in 1989, Wallace and Gromit have become household names: here’s every film starring the iconic duo, ranked from worst to best. Created by then-student Nick Park, cheese-enthusiast Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) and his dog, Gromit, have appeared in four short films and one feature – with a new, augmented reality project reportedly in the works at stop-motion powerhouse Aardman. The plots of these films tend to revolve around Wallace and Gromit trying their hand at various occupations, aided (and regularly hindered) by Wallace’s wacky inventions, and being intruded upon by sinister forces. Often described as “quintessentially British”, Park’s work has won numerous awards and aided the continued appeal of stop-motion animation in a world turned CGI.

For the uninitiated, most films operate at a frame rate of twenty-four frames per second, there are others like Will Smith’s Gemini Man that was filmed at 120 FPS, but generally, it’s limited to 24. That means that each second of footage is made up of twenty-four still images. When strung together and played back, these images create the illusion of motion – often aided by a synchronized soundtrack and (if you’ve got the budget) a score. While live-action projects rarely operate on a frame-by-frame basis, with camera technology handling most of the work, animation requires a bespoke image be created for each new frame. Stop-motion animation, as opposed to hand-drawn or computer-generated, consists of manipulating physical puppets on a model set and taking a new picture for each frame of movement.

In the case of Wallace and Gromit, these puppets are made out of modeling clay – which the animators manipulate, smooth out, and photograph for months on end until the project is completed. In the world of stop-motion animation, it’s commonplace to have only shot a few seconds of footage after an entire day’s work, but as the work of the likes of Laika Animation shows, the results can be beautiful. Despite their quaint, unassuming appeal, the Wallace and Gromit films are the height of artistic achievement – presenting a hand-crafted universe wherein you can literally see the animators’ fingerprints on every frame, and telling tongue-in-cheek genre tales that perfectly balance atmosphere and comedy like very little else. Here’s every Wallace and Gromit film ranked, worst to best.

5. A Close Shave

Every Wallace & Gromit Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

The third Wallace and Gromit short film, A Close Shave, sees the duo running a window cleaning business. While Wallace begins a romance with the owner of a local wool shop (Wendolene, voiced by Anne Reid), Gromit investigates a sheep-rustling spree – leading to his wrongful imprisonment, framed for the very crime he was trying to unearth. Famed for introducing Shaun the Sheep, A Close Shave is solid, though Wallace’s romantic subplot does feel a little inconsequential.

As is often the case, this is Gromit’s story and the scenes with him in prison are admittedly moving, while still maintaining a high joke ratio. It’s inventive stuff, for sure, but feels a little cluttered in its execution – with one too many story elements for its relatively short runtime. That said, the film is still a massive accomplishment with a tense finale and some dramatic reveals. Winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1995, A Close Shave led to a successful spin-off franchise starring the aforementioned Shaun the Sheep – with his latest feature film, Farmageddon, released in 2019.

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4. A Matter of Loaf and Death

Every Wallace & Gromit Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

The fourth and most recent Wallace and Gromit short film, A Matter of Loaf and Death, has unfortunately become the victim of nostalgia – left underappreciated as a result of fan-love for the earlier films. Released in 2008, murder mystery A Matter of Loaf and Death sees Wallace and Gromit running a bakery. With the unsettling news that a number of local bakers have disappeared, Gromit investigates – while Wallace begins a dubious romance with Piella Bakewell (voiced by Sally Lindsay), a former pin-up girl for the Bake-o-Lite bread company. In a change of pace, Gromit also has a love interest this time around: Piella’s put-upon poodle, Puffles, who proves a worthy addition to the family.

A Matter of Loaf and Death might be the darkest of the series, with a literal murder plot at its center. Ever the cinephile, Park included references to Blood and Black Lace, Hitchcock’s Psycho, and even riffs on Aliens and the Adam West Batman flick. Tonally, A Matter of Loaf and Death is reminiscent of the Ealing comedies – a string of post-war movies, fondly remembered for their dark humor and British sensibility. Piella, in particular, feels like an Ealing villain – her butter-wouldn’t-melt appearance betraying sinister motives. What’s more, her romance with Wallace feels entirely baked-in: crucial to the story being told, and part of its darker aspirations.

3. A Grand Day Out

Every Wallace & Gromit Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

The first Wallace and Gromit short film, A Grand Day Out, might seem a little primitive in comparison to the rest of the series, but that only adds to its charm. Starting production when Nick Park was still a student, A Grand Day Out sees Wallace and Gromit travel to the Moon in search of cheese (it’s made of the stuff, obviously), building a rocket, and encountering a strange, coin-operated robot. Despite its visual inconsistencies with the rest of the Wallace and Gromit canon, the film is remarkably sure of itself – with Park’s trademark style on display, inspired by The Beano and various Tintin cartoons.

Its rough-around-the-edges appeal is largely down to its shoe-string budget. For example, Park literally glued split peas and lentils onto his rocket model to simulate rivets, but the whole thing is incredibly atmospheric (aided by Julian Nott’s eerie score), which makes up for its lower joke rate compared to the other films. While Wallace and Gromit appear almost fully-formed, complete with Peter Sallis’s iconic vocal performance, the coin-operated robot steals the show – proving Park’s knack for silent comedy straight out of the gate, as well as his ability to imbue nearly featureless characters with an incredible amount of personality. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1991, A Grand Day Out lost to Park’s other film, Creature Comforts. If his talent wasn’t evident before, let this be the tipping point.

2. The Wrong Trousers

Every Wallace & Gromit Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

The second Wallace and Gromit short film, The Wrong Trousers, is – for many – the best entry in the series, and for good reason. Following the success of A Grand Day Out, with a bigger budget and more animators at his disposal, Park threw the kitchen sink at The Wrong Trousers, refining his aesthetic and introducing a strong action element to the series that has continued in every subsequent production. Low on cash, Wallace rents out his spare room to Feathers McGraw, a sinister penguin with his beady eyes on Wallace’s latest invention – a pair of robotic trousers, designed to walk Gromit so that Wallace doesn’t have to. Ever the detective, Gromit smells something fishy and – despite being driven from his home – works to uncover Feathers’ dastardly scheme. This culminates in the mother of all chase scenes, which is regarded among many as one of the best action set-pieces of all time.

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Feathers McGraw is an iconic villain – unsettling from the get-go, despite his milk-bottle appearance and limited expression. Hitchcock’s influence is, once again, evident with The Wrong Trousers playing like an atmospheric thriller, but the jokes come thick and fast: an improvement over its predecessor. Winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1994, The Wrong Trousers is among the best that the medium has to offer – no question about it.

1. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

After making his feature film debut with Chicken Run in 2000, Nick Park felt ready to bring Wallace and Gromit to the big screen – The Curse of the Were-Rabbit releasing in 2005 to critical acclaim and box-office success. A co-production between Aardman and Dreamworks, the latter company were notoriously difficult to work with (terminating their relationship with Aardman in 2007), but none of that is evident in the final product – making Wallace and Gromit’s transition between short films to full-length feature an incredibly smooth one. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit sees the duo running a successful pest-control business, ridding their town of rabbits by re-housing them. When one of Wallace’s inventions backfires, a supernatural saboteur – the titular Were-Rabbit (a riff on werewolf tropes) – begins to ravage local vegetable plots. As usual, it’s up to Gromit to save the day and uncover the mysterious culprit, lest the annual giant vegetable competition should fall into ruin. Meanwhile, Wallace becomes infatuated with Lady Tottington (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter), an aristocrat and the competition’s host, but comes under fire from a rival suitor, Victor Quartermaine (voiced by Ralph Fiennes).

Featuring a larger cast of ‘human’ characters than is normal in a Wallace and Gromit film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit expands their universe and understands the inherent differences between a feature and a short – altering its concerns to fit, with a larger story and a consistent joke rate that could rival Hot Fuzz, with every type of gag being utilized in one way or another. In fact, the two films would make an excellent double feature, with both exploring what happens when heightened, genre elements intrude on small-town, British life. While The Wrong Trousers is the best of the short films, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit presented a bigger challenge – and, despite interference from Dreamworks, the team at Aardman knocked it out of the park. Their efforts were duly recognized when, in a Wallace and Gromit first, the film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. From humble, student origins to global phenomenon, Park’s creations have become pillars of cinema, and – like all good artists – his work (and the work of his colleagues at Aardman) makes the world a slightly better place.

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