By Nick Nitkowski 

I’ve mentioned countlessly my love of the art of stop-motion animation, so you know that it’s my favorite style of animation that I greatly respect because of my own experiences with it. However, just because something is made using stop-motion animation doesn’t always mean that it’s good. I know a couple of bad stop-motion animation projects that I would be best to forget. But lately, I haven’t had to worry about that because they’ve been knocking it out of the park this year! And the new “Wallace & Gromit: Xengeance Most Fowl” film from Netflix and Aardman Animation is no exception! 

The company behind “Wallace & Gromit” is the same company responsible for other great stop-motion, or in this case, known as “Claymation” when the clay is involved, such as “Chicken Run” 1 and 2, “Shaun the Sheep”, “The Pirates!”, and “Early Man”. They also made two CG animated films you may know, “Flushed Away” and “Arthur Christmas”. That company is Aardman Animations. And from the titles I’ve listed, you can probably tell that I’m a fan. You might even be one as well. And with this new “Wallace & Gromit” movie coming to Netflix, I was very excited to see it. So how was it?

This movie was absolutely fantastic! I enjoyed this movie so much that when it was over, I restarted it and watched it again! I enjoyed it very much! Everything about it was perfect! The stop-motion animation, the story, the execution of said story, and even the characters.

If you know Wallace and Gromit, then you know their characters perfectly well. The quirky inventor who’s not quite as smart as he thinks along with this dog who’s much smarter yet always conveys his thoughts through expressions. Perfect combo that shines again in this movie. There’s also a new character called Norbot, an invention created by Wallace. This character provided lots of laughs while also being unsettling to look at.

But my absolute favorite character in this whole movie has got to be Feathers McGraw, a voiceless and expressionless penguin criminal mastermind who was featured in one of the original “Wallace & Gromit” shorts. It’s truly amazing how great this character is in this movie without uttering a single word while having the same expressionless face every time he is on screen. 

I don’t have any critiques for this movie. I honestly thought it was perfect. Clocking in at only an hour and 18 minutes, it was the perfect runtime and didn’t overstay its welcome. In fact, I wouldn’t have minded the movie being a little longer just so I could see more. But as it stands, it’s perfect just the way it is.

Overall, if you’re a fan of “Wallace & Gromit”, then it’s easy to say that you’re going to enjoy “Wallace and Gromitt: Vengeance Most Fowl”. But if you haven’t seen “Wallace & Gromit”, I would still highly recommend checking this one out on Netflix. I’m confident that it will win you over and make a fan out of you. It looks like Aardman has done it again because this movie is the furthest thing from “Fowl”. 

5 stars