Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl sees the return of our favourite Claymation villain, Feathers McGraw

Review - Wallace & Gromit may have returned, but are they back?

To date, the intensely loveable claymation duo have enjoyed a flawless run of adventures, reaching back several decades to 1989's A Grand Day Out. Initially conceived as a solo university project from series creator and director Nick Park, their inaugural outing saw the mild-mannered (but utterly mad) inventor and his under-appreciated dog travel to the moon on a quest for cheese.

Outer space doesn't exactly make for a modest beginning - most franchises typically take their time when it comes to breaching interplanetary borders - but subsequent sequels have reliably taken Wallace & Gromit on dazzling new escapades across new genres, all without leaving their quiet northern village.

Last time we saw them on the big screen (with 2005's The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), Wallace had found a way to trade brainwaves with a rabbit, causing him to transform into a fluffy, veggie-devouring kaiju under the pale glow of moonlight. Their most recent short, 2008's A Matter of Loaf and Death, was a murder mystery set around a bakery that descended into an Aliens riff.

True to the spirit of its characters, the films have embraced experimentation at every turn - at least until now.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl follows in the wake of countless long-awaited sequels (this year's releases include Gladiator 2, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Twisters and more) by retracing the series' own steps. Beyond flagging the villainous return of Feathers McGraw (a silently intimidating penguin in a low-rent chicken disguise), the film largely plays as an upscaled remix of 1993 fan-favourite The Wrong Trousers.

Wallace (voiced by Ben Whitehead, following Peter Sallis's death in 2017) once again finds himself in financial distress. "Maybe I'm just making too many gadgets," he ponders as an automated hand pours milk onto Gromit's head, missing the cereal bowl below.

Naturally, his solution to their predicament comes in the form of a new invention: an automated "smart gnome" named Norbot. While designed to assist Gromit in garden tasks, the offputtingly chipper robot becomes fawned over by neighbours, and is tasked with a series of local backyard makeovers.

Norbot's popularity soon catches the attention of Feathers, who's been spending his prison time plotting sweet revenge and getting buff, Cape Fear style. (It cannot be stressed enough that this penguin is one of fiction's most terrifying villains.) Having apparently taken up computer hacking while operating as a jewel thief, the criminal mastermind taps into the pint-sized landscaper's CPU and takes over control from behind bars.

Also returning is Chief Inspector Mackintosh (Peter Kay), a senior policeman who's more invested in planning for retirement than training the station's overeager recruit, PC Mukherjee (Lauren Patel); the latter's go-getter attitude soon sees Wallace pursued by the law for Feathers's remote crimes, never mind their history of crime-stopping and false imprisonment.

As far as retreads go, you could certainly do worse. The familiar story succeeds as a rock-solid foundation for Aardman Studios's claymation wizardry (orchestrated by directors Park and Merlin Crossingham), which frankly feels more miraculous than ever amid the surfeit of soulless children's films that have dominated multiplexes. It's an art form whose core appeal lies in the conspicuous presence of its creators' literal fingerprints, each frame brandishing the spectacle of its own craft.

While Vengeance Most Fowl is flush with Rube-Goldberg-ian gags (Wallace's famous morning routine now reaches Willy Wonka levels of industrial whimsy), Gromit's face remains one of the series's most impressive feats, a high watermark for the emotive potential of plasticine.

It's remarkable how well Wallace & Gromit have aged. The films have always concerned themselves with the over-engineering of modern life; again, we're talking about a human protagonist whose first instinct, upon running out of cheese, was to build a spaceship. Each story is built on the same enduring premise: that for all its conveniences, technology will invariably, horrifically, go awry.

In a series that's featured anything from a robot dog to automated trousers, Norbot feels somewhat redundant - but God knows kids could benefit from a little more animosity towards artificial intelligence. Ex Machina this is not, but there's a timeliness to how an army of Norbots proliferate overnight without objection, and proceed to flatten flourishing backyards into the same pre-fab, smoothed-over designs.

Between Vengeance Most Fowl and last year's Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, there's a creeping fear that Aardman's Netflix era is more eager to rekindle familiar pleasures than to re-assert the kind of innovative storytelling that it once embodied.

Nonetheless, Wallace & Gromit have been sorely missed - and crucially, its preposterous wit and madcap thrills have remained intact. The film's climactic boat chase alone justifies a trip to the cinemas (as opposed to waiting for its digital release); it's one of the year's most jaw-dropping set pieces and gives Mission: Impossible a run for its money.

Sometimes, more of the same is more than enough.

- ABC