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When I write about movies I never really know how many of the people I am connecting with have seen them, or are actually planning to catch them later (hopefully sometimes based on what I say). Even big films like Wicked and Deadpool & Wolverine are going to pass some of you by. In the case of this latest Wallace & Gromit film though, I know everyone has already watched it. Whatever other Christmas TV we selected; Strictly Come Dancing, Call the Midwife, Eastenders, Gavin & Stacey, Doctor Who, Ainsley’s Festive Flavours, there is no question that this one was marked with a highlighter in all our Radio Times (metaphorically, if not in reality).

At least this is the case in the UK. First off because, even more than Paddington, these modelling clay megastars are a true British institution. (I’ve just realised I didn’t mention the King’s Speech a minute ago but in terms of nationally loved figures he probably follows all of those others.) Also, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is not available internationally until it drops on Netflix on 3rd Jan. 

So here in Blighty we all know that this was a triumphant return for our stop motion stalwarts then. This feature length story (only the second in their fimo filmography) delivered all the usual charm, wit, adventure, inventiveness and eccentricity that we’ve come to expect and rely on. The plot this time sees Feathers McGraw, last seen in 1993’s The Wrong Trousers, escape from prison and out for revenge on the play-doh duo.

Bringing back Feathers McGraw is a genius move. These films have given us a number of key human players alongside Wallace over the years (including two in this film that might have got a bit too much airtime) but it has always been the voiceless animals that have stood out. Gromit is of course the lynchpin of the whole thing, building on the tropes of silent cinema with his wonderful design and characterisation, but we’ve also had Shaun the Sheep (who has since had two movies and a series of his own), the robot dog Preston and the rabbit Hutch (see what they did there?). I’m giving a shout out here to Mr. Bobo and Polly from Aardman’s The Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists as well. What is great about Feathers though is that he doesn’t have the same expressiveness as these other characters. He doesn’t even have any eyebrows. Yet with a tilt of the head or a fixed black eyed stare he can say so much. He is a simply wonderful creation

Coming as it does three decades after The Wrong Trousers and sixteen years after Wallace & Gromit’s last short movie A Matter of Loaf and Death, this feels like it is riffing on the current trend for Legacy Sequels just as much as they always have other cinematic conventions. There are key items that return as a throwback here as well and there is also a level of sentimentality that exists in these types of films that we’ve not seen in Wallace & Gromit before, especially at the end. This might be a knowing inclusion or it could be that just like Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Ghostbusters and Top Gun, they’ve earned it. 

Looking at this without nostalgia tinted spectacles on, it is possibly not as funny as what has come before. Reece Shearsmith voices a robot gnome that is cute more than it is amusing and the plays on the word gnome to home do get a little repetitious. More successful are the references to Gromit’s mutism, which I thought for a second they might be suggesting was elective, and again you need a history with the character for this to land. 

Of course the animation and artistry here is magnificent. There is a chase at the end that heads into expansive countryside which we’ve not seen on this scale before, yet still it doesn’t seem to be heavily enhanced by CGI (unlike last year’s Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget). 

All in all Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is a glorious hit. 

You know that though; you’ve seen it.