Studio: Aardman Animations, Wallace and Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol, Lionheart Television, BBC Children's International
Distributor: BBC Enterprises
Produced by: Chris Moll
Short Synopsis
For Gromit's birthday, the inventor Wallace gives his dog a collar, a lead and a pair of second-hand NASA "Techno-Trousers", robotic walking trousers he plans to use to take Gromit for walks. Short of money, Wallace also takes in a lodger: a silent penguin, who moves into Gromit's room and, it seems, into Wallace's affections. Pushed out, Gromit leaves home. The penguin, meanwhile, is studying the Techno-Trousers. He rewires them so that he can control them remotely, straps the sleeping Wallace into them, and walks him up the walls and across the ceiling. Gromit, out in the rain, sees the penguin by night and discovers that he is a jewel thief, Feathers McGraw, wanted for a diamond robbery, disguising himself with a rubber glove on his head as a chicken. Feathers uses Wallace, in the trousers, to steal a diamond from the city museum. Gromit foils the escape, and the climax is a chase through the house on Wallace's model railway, with Gromit laying track in front of his speeding train, until Feathers is caught and sent to the zoo.
Why It Matters
- The model-railway chase, with Gromit frantically laying down track in front of his own speeding train while firing at the penguin, is one of the great action sequences in animation, staged with the precision of a Hollywood thriller. Feathers McGraw, who never makes a sound, is a superb silent villain.
- It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and a BAFTA, and it established Wallace and Gromit, introduced in A Grand Day Out (1989), as international stars. Its plasticine stop-motion became Aardman's signature, leading to A Close Shave and, later, Chicken Run.
Notes and Trivia
- The heist sequence is partly a pastiche of the thriller Rififi (1955).
- Gromit, like Feathers, never speaks; all his acting is done with his brow and eyes.
- See also: A Close Shave (1995).