Wallace and Gromit
Trousers, sheep and cheese

By Amy Diaz
(A review of The Wallace and Gromit video series)

Nick Park has hit the big time with Chicken Run, his claymation master piece that is garnering both critical praise and box office success. Before Mel Gibson and the chickens came along, the animator won Oscars for his earlier stop motion short films starring Wallace and Gromit.

Wallace is an English window washer and Gromit is his faithful - and intellectually superior - dog.

Gromit is the one who runs and repairs the elaborate inventions that fill the household. Through the pair's adventures, it is Gromit who always keeps his wits about him and saves the day. No small order for a dog who doesn't talk and communicates primarily with his expressive clay eyebrows.

The Wallace and Gromit movies are each about 30 minutes long and, since the success of Chicken Run, have found their way in box set to video stores nationwide. These shorts are each delightful films which, like Chicken Run, are at least as entertaining to adults as they are to children.

A Grand Day Out follows Wallace’s search for cheese. Being a bank holiday, he can't just run to a shop. Wallace decides to head for the moon since "everybody knows the moon is made of cheese." He spends a good deal of his lunar adventure trying to decide just what type of cheese the moon is made of. Meanwhile, Gromit is trying to save Wallace from machine-induced harm.

In The Wrong Trousers, a pair of high-tech pants gets Wallace embroiled in a jewel heist. Gromit - temporarily replaced in Wallace's good graces by penguin who is renting his room - must save Wallace from harm. Like Gromit, the penguin never talks but we know from the beginning that he is evil.

The trilogy's stand out is A Close Shave. With foreshadows of Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit must save a herd of sheep from a maniacal dog and his horrible dog food machine. Despite running only half an hour, the story has everything from romance - Wallace is smitten by a local florist - to a prison breakout. (Gromit ends up in jail and, to pass the time in the pokey, reads “Crime and Punishment” by Fido Dogstoevsky.) The action packed finish includes many of the World War II elements that make their way into the recent feature such as fighter pilots and prisoners carted away in ominous covered trucks.

With its dry humor and amazing animation, the Wallace and Gromit films are perfect for movie-goers who want to see more of Park’s work, or to ready themselves for the Wallace and Gromit feature film expected to come to theaters in the coming years.

The box set with all three videos sells for about $25 in VHS, $30 in DVD.