Wallace & Gromit Night

After dabbling in space travel, window washing and accommodating paying guests, Wallace and his dog Gromit have a new business; pest control. An obvious progression, surely! Wallace has invented various machines to get rid of the rabbits plaguing the villagers’ vegetable patches. This enterprise is made all the more important by the imminent county fair with its coveted golden carrot award for the largest vegetable. Lady Tottington (“call me Totty”), the hostess of the fair calls them out to deal with a pest problem and when they meet, Wallace immediately falls in love with her. But she is being wooed by the hunting-mad Victor Quartemaine and as the fair approaches a new menace is destroying the villagers’ prize vegetables.

Aardman Animations, the studio also behind Chicken Run, are great at adding little comedy touches and visual gags to their projects such as Peter Kay’s policeman being called PC Mackintosh, their pest control firm, “Anti-Pesto” and one of Wallace’s books, East of Edam (look out for that bookcase, there’s a ton more cheese puns in there). The characters, painstakingly animated with 2.8 tons of plasticine (and a little bit of CGI), are wonderfully imagined and voiced, and the dialogue is well written. This is a kids’ film with a pretty simple plot but a lot of the humour is aimed squarely at adults, from the cheesy cheese puns in Wallace’s bookcase to Wallace covering his nakedness with a box that says “may contain nuts”.

Also on this fantastic animated night we will be showing, Wallace & Gromit's Cracking Contraptions, a short where they try out a number of their latest inventions which rarely work as planned, Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers when Wallace is used by a criminal penguin in a robbery involving mechanical trousers, Wallace & Gromit in A Close Shave where Wallace falls for Wendolene, wool shop owner and Gromit is framed for sheep rustling and also A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit when the duo run out of cheese, providing an excellent excuse to holiday on the moon.

See them all here!

Seamus Bradley