I felt like revisiting some of my favorite animated comfort food by watching a bunch of from Britain’s Aardman Animations studio. This will just be the shorts, not feature films like Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Title: Creature Comforts
Release Date: 15 July 1989
Director: Nick Park
Production Company: Aardman Animations.
Summary/Review:
“In Brazil you have the space.”
In my college years (1991-1995), I went to a lot of animation festivals at the local arthouse cinema. I remember Creature Comforts being a big hit at one of the first festivals I attended. It’s a simple concept, in which various animals discuss their lives in a zoo. It’s even better when you learn that the voices are from unscripted interviews with various everyday people. They weren’t necessarily talking about zoo animals, yet it all fits. I only just learned that Creature Comforts was spun off into a tv series in the UK in the 2000s.
Rating: ****
Title: A Grand Day Out
Release Date: 4 November 1989
Director: Nick Park
Production Company: National Film and Television School | Aardman Animations
Summary/Review:
“Gromit, that’s it! Cheese! We’ll go somewhere where there’s cheese!”
This is the first Wallace & Gromit short, and the most absurdist of them all, and I probably saw it in the same animation festival as Creature Comforts. Wallace wants somewhere to travel and they’re out of cheese. So he decides to go to the one place that combines both – the Moon. They build a rocket and fly to the moon where they meet a coin-operated oven on wheels that issues parking tickets. And you’ve never seen a coin-operated oven on wheels look so indignant! This film is especially fun for all the little details you can pick out on repeated viewings.
Rating: ****
Title: The Wrong Trousers
Release Date: 17 December 1993
Director: Nick Park
Production Company: Aardman Animations
Summary/Review:
“It’s the wrong trousers Gromit! And they’ve gone wrong!”
Wallace & Gromit come into their own in this short which establishes their home setting as a kind of theme park nostalgic vision of a post-war village in the North of England. In this case they deal with techno-trousers, a shortage of money, a paying houseguest, and a jewel heist! You’ll never hear “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” the same way again. The chase scene on the model railroad is one of the greatest things ever animated.
Rating: *****
Title: A Close Shave
Release Date: 24 December 1995
Director: Nick Park
Production Company:Aardman Animations
Summary/Review:
“Aye, I’d better see to him. The bounce has gone from his bungee.”
Wallace & Gromit was such a big hit at animation festivals that by the time A Close Shave was released, we were pretty much going to see Wallace & Gromit. Like, I think they may have put a couple of other animated shorts before it, but it was promoted as your chance to see the new Wallace & Gromit. In this short, Wallace & Gromit deal with a wool shortage, sheep rustlers, and a new member of the household: Shaun the Sheep (who would spin off into his own media empire). This is the first short where Wallace & Gromit have a business – in this case window washers. It’s also the first time there’s a character other than Wallace who speaks, who becomes the first of Wallace’s love interests, Wendoline. I go back and forth over whether I like The Wrong Trousers or A Close Shave better, but together they are peak Wallace & Gromit.
Rating: *****
Title: A Matter of Loaf and Death
Release Date: 3 December 2008
Director: Nick Park
Production Company: Aardman Animations
Summary/Review:
“Farewell, my angel cake. You’ll always be my Bake-O-Lite Girl.”
I didn’t know that this short existed until I saw it in the package with the other Wallace & Gromit shorts I was streaming. It follows the same formula as A Close Shave and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit where Wallace is enchanted by a love interest and the duo run a business with a lot of Rube Goldberg devices. In this case they are bakers and the love interest, Piella Bakewell, a former beauty queen for a bread company. There’s also the mystery of 12 local bakers gone missing. Will Wallace make a baker’s dozen? It feels like the formula has gone a bit off in this short, and it feels a bit grim for a cozy comedy to have a story involving a serial killer. And the villain’s motivation is basically a fat joke. Also, we get to see Wallace’s bare buttocks, which was not necessary.
Rating: ***1/2
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