Long time fan. Back to when Nick Park was first coming to attention here in the UK.
Indeed I can remember what I think was the first screening of A Grand Day Out on British television. It’d been nominated for an Oscar, but had lost out to his own Creature Comforts, which I had already seen. A Grand Day Out was then being shown in some afternoon slot. Maybe, perhaps on a Bank Holiday? I was a grad student at the time and so had to commandeer the TV room in the halls of residence to watch it. Which wasn’t a problem – nobody else wanted to watch anything. Except that then someone else wandered in, only to be puzzled by why I was watching what was evidently just a kid’s cartoon. Yet he duly got captivated by it. To the point where he was seriously going out and dragging passers-by in on the grounds that “you have to see this”.
Many years later and I actually had a boss who had been a childhood friend of Park’s. He still gets a hand-drawn cartoon Xmas card from him every year.
Pirates* was great, and I’m a big fan of * Arthur Christmas*, which is now my favorite Christmas story. * Arthur* is such a wonderful combination of demented and also subtle humor that it never gets old. Briony the wrapping elf is delightful (“There’s always time for a bow!”).
A subtle joke from Flushed Away (their weakest, but still very good) is when Roddy goes through his closet and you briefly see Wallace’s outfit in it.
In the main, comedy gold well-and-truly – and I love the way this kind of animation works. bonzer praises A Grand Day Out – I found this one a little bit feeble: basically they go to the moon, they mess around there a little, they come back. Have delighted in all else “W&G” that I’ve seen, and Chicken Run.
I like the whole Wallace / Gromit relationship: a very old comic “trope” if that’s the right word, but none the worse for that – the leader / boss is in fact thoroughly clueless; and his sidekick, supposedly of an inferior order of beings, is actually much brighter – he’s the one who’s responsible for accomplishing most of what is done, and gets the team out of the predicaments which the boss’s stupidity gets them into. Gromit doesn’t talk; but one feels that he certainly could, if he thought there were any advantage in doing so.
It’s not plot driven, obviously. But the delight is in the imagination and the characters’ reaction. Things like the mice with sunglasses, or the refrigerator wanting to ski are delightful.
It’s not quite as good as The Wrong Trousers or A Close Shave – which added a stronger plot to the mix – but it is charming and a lot of fun.
I received a cheese gift basket last Christmas, and you can imagine my utter delight when one of the cheeses turned out to be Wensleydale, which I’d never had before (and which I liked a lot).
Of course, my wife had to put up with wandering around the house saying “…not even Wensleydale” in the worst accent ever…
Reality Chuck, MrD – I fear I’m a notoriously miserable, hard-to-please so-and-so. As R C suggests, A Grand Day Out can be seen to suffer a bit, in one respect anyway, in comparison with its two close-contemporary offerings; but I’ll concur – difference between “good”, and “superlative”.
Wallace and Gromit saved Wensleydale cheese: the factory was in danger of closing due to dwindling sales, until Wallace name-checked it in A Grand Day Out, when sales shot up. It’s also very good cheese: sharp and crumbly.
And if anyone hasn’t seen the Creature Comforts shorts, they are pure joy. They don’t use voice actors or scripts, but get members of the public to ad-lib their thoughts on topics from the grand to the mundane, from time and death to the nature of clowns and circuses, and then animate the voices to various animals. The results are genius, sometimes hilarious, sometimes oddly profound and moving.
Huge fan of Wallace and Gromit, utter genius all of them.
My one gripe with Aardman, is they insist on completely failing to learn the lesson of Wallace and Gromit and continue to try and make Disney knock-offs. Stuff like Early Man and Chicken Run, just comes off as stop motion knock-off Disney, which is not their strong suit. Whereas what makes W&G awesome is it has its own style of storytelling, humor, dialogue, etc. that is not Disney or Dreamworks.
PBS was coming in the other night, so it was kind of on in the background. What was playing was Last of the Summer Wine. I was only kind of a third paying attention, but enough to ask, “Is that Wallace?” Indeed it was, that voice is unmistakable.
The first time I saw the American version, I was on the floor howling with laughter. I soon realized that this was FAR too clever for American audiences, and sure enough, it was canceled after only three episodes were aired. Thankfully, seven episodes were produced.
Yeah, I think there is a money guy at Aardman who keeps saying “Look how much money the last Disney/Dreamworks animation made, make a film like that!”. Ignoring the fact that what makes W&G so awesome is they aren’t just a stop motion Dreamworks knock-off, they have a complete different style of humor, pacing, storytelling, etc. When Aardman makes a hollywood style film like Early Man, they really don’t play to their strengths.
I didn’t hate Early Man, but it is relatively weak. Part of it is that it was your basic “Plucky underdog sports team wins championship” trope. Park at his best was gloriously imaginative, and this was pretty pedestrian.
