Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

The original run cartoons featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner ran from 1949 to 1966. They made 40 cartoons. Every one of them, every single one of them, followed the same formula: Coyote wants to eat Road Runner, Coyote tries various contraptions and schemes, fails miserably and inflicts harm upon himself. The only deviation I know of was, on a couple of occasions, subbing in Bugs Bunny for the Road Runner, which, other than giving him someone to banter with, still followed the same formula: hunger, chase, failure, pain. Was it predictable? Sure. But the fun was in the elements within the formula. How, exactly, Wile E's contraptions or schemes would backfire. They are a prime example of the journey being more important than the destination. Wallace & Gromit movies, both the short and feature length, are like that. Wallace invents something, he is kind-hearted but oblivious to the inherent danger within his invention, it goes haywire, hijinks ensue, Gromit sees the hazard, saves the day. Vengeance Most Fowl does not differ from this whatsoever, and that is perfectly fine. If, for some reason, Aardman decided to make a W&G short with deep character exploration or an emotionally wrought story arc, I'd be confounded as to why. The charm in W&G is their simplicity and predictability. You know who the main characters are, you know what they'll do, you know it'll turn out alright in the end. How they get from A to B is the important part. And, like just about all other W&G material, the journey of this one is fun. Perhaps the most fun since the short this is a sequel to, The Wrong Trousers. It didn't blow me away with laughs a minute, but it constantly amused me and kept my attention (I can't say the same for their last movie, The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, which often loses my interest). Yes, it follows the formula, so if you've seen one before, you know what to expect here, and you won't be disappointed. But if you're interested in this, odds are you know that anyway. All this will do is serve as a reassurance that it is on par with the rest of their material. And if you haven't seen a W&G movie before, know it's charming, decidedly British, full of slapstick and silliness, and has some of the best stop-motion you'll see. Not much more to it than that, really.