WALLACE AND GROMIT: A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH (Lionsgate, 2008) D: Nick Park, w/ Peter Sallis, Sally Lindsay. Rating: NNNN DVD package: NNN Rating: NNNN
Don’t be fooled by the cover blurb. This isn’t a feature it’s a 30-minute TV special. But it’s got the same high quality as Wallace and Gromit’s 2005 feature, Curse Of The Were-Rabbit.
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The backgrounds are fully detailed, particularly the bakery whose cogs and chutes play a big part in the action. The claymation is flawless. Gromit, the dog, does it all with his brows – a lift here, a scrunch there and he’s a fully realized comic character.
Wallace and Gromit open a bakery, but someone is murdering bakers. Gromit’s suspicions grow while Wallace, oblivious as ever, falls in love with Piella Bakewell.
All this results in some sharp visual comedy, including a big action climax featuring, among other things, an homage to Aliens, only with oven mitts. There’s also a sinister room full of mannequins right out of Mario Bava’s Hatchet For A Honeymoon.
The Shaun The Sheep episode in the extras is simpler and shorter (six minutes) but offers excellent claymation and kinetic humour. A sheep and his buddies play an impromptu soccer game with a cabbage that the pigs next door keep trying to steal.
EXTRAS Commentary, making-of doc, Shaun The Sheep episode. Full-frame.
