Film review An evil penguin returns to up the aaargh! ante
The Guardian|October 28, 2024
This Christmas, the BBC is giving us a cracker: the first new Wallace and Gromit for 16 years. It has all the trimmings: Nick Park as co-director; a starring role for the Pontcysyllte aqueduct; cheese.
Catherine Shoard
Film review An evil penguin returns to up the aaargh! ante

But before its 25 December TV debut, the film premieres at the American Film Institute festival in Los Angeles tomorrow - presumably to enable an Oscar run next year. Perhaps there's another reason. A Halloween premiere feels more fitting than a festive one.

Wallace and Gromit has always been surprisingly frightening. The Wrong Trousers was classic noir, all oblique angles and chiaroscuro. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit featured a vampiric bunny. In A Matter of Loaf and Death, Wallace was romanced by a serial killer. Their latest outing ups the aaargh! ante even higher by bringing back one of cinema's most sinister villains: Feathers McGraw, the penguin who hijacked Wallace's automatic slacks in The Wrong Trousers to commit a jewel heist. Feathers - brimful of an unfathomable evil - was sentenced to substantial zoo time. He plots escape and revenge by hacking Wallace's latest invention: Norbot, a robot gnome with an enthusiasm for topiary and mopping.

This story is from the October 28, 2024 edition of The Guardian.

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This story is from the October 28, 2024 edition of The Guardian.

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