Wallace y Gromit: La gran excursión

In this Wallace and Gromit short, the clay twosome voyage to the moon in order to replenish their cheese supplies. They also learn that traffic wardens have dreams too. This is stylish and funny and will leave you wanting to see more.

To my mind, this is the best W&G outing. Let me explain. I agree that the characters are not as developed as they were in 'The Wrong Trousers' or 'A Close Shave' and also the plot is weaker. Some of the models are not as refined as they came to be (this is after all the first W&G film).

What it has that the other W&G offerings lack is that feeling of sadness and mood that the 'The Wrong Trousers' and 'A Close Shave' replace with story telling. This is closer to Tom and Jerry than it is to Chicken Run. It has laughs sure, but the feeling I have when the credits role is of one of wistfulness and a slight melancholy. Not bad for 20 minutes of plasticine animation!

See this Wallace and Gromit, then move onto the others asap.

Nick Park has created such funny characters with Wallace and his faithful dog Gromit. This time, they run out of cheese and decide to get it on the moon, as 'everybody knows it's made of cheese'.

They make their own spaceship and finally make it to the moon, where the cheese doesn't really taste like anything and they have an encounter with a local robot, whose secret dream is it to ski (as we see in a lovely dream sequence with the W&G theme playing on the background, loved that!).

This short picture is so funny, I can recommend it to anyone. Maybe not as much though as the even more brilliant 'The Wrong Trousers'... oh heck, what am I talking, watch all the W&G right now! You'll be glad you did.

8/10.

There is a lot of be admired about the Wallace and Gromit short films. The intricate craftsmanship is always excellent, and you can only imagine how long it must have taken to film even a second of the stop-motion animation. The humour is gentle and family-friendly, and also very British… if that can serve as an adequate description. In this, the first film out of three directed by Nick Park – not including the Oscar-winning feature length film of 2005 – 'A Grand Day Out' is a genuinely entertaining 23 minutes of imagination and creativity, completed over six years by Park, who produced the film as part of his graduation project from the National Film and Television School.

I have heard some remark that the animation in this film is poor, and yet I find myself wondering how they came to this conclusion. Of course, the work may not be as refined as the later additions to the series, given that Park was less experienced and was undoubtedly working on a smaller budget, but the quality is still never anything less than excellent. The story begins on a rather dull banking holiday, and the good-natured Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) is unsuccessfully trying to decide where he and his canine companion Gromit are to spend their day off. Suddenly, Wallace makes a horrifying discovery: their house is completely devoid of dairy products! And so – as anybody might do in such a situation – the pair endeavour to travel to the Moon, which everybody knows is comprised of cheese.

Wallace, being an enthusiastic inventor, casually tosses together a space rocket, and pretty soon they are ready for their big journey. In probably the film's most memorable sequence, Wallace realises, just as the launch countdown is beginning, that they forgot to bring the crackers. Imagine going to the Moon without crackers! However, some quick-thinking and agility from Wallace eventually saves the day, and the pair pass their otherwise uneventful Moon-ward journey by reading the newspaper and building delicate playing card pyramids. Their picnic on the lunar surface offers a hint of imaginative absurdity, with the main storyline concerning a coin-operated gas oven who lives on the Moon, writes out parking tickets and dreams of skiing.

All this makes for a quirky, clever and humorous short film that literally anybody can enjoy. Interestingly, 'A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit' was nominated for Best Animated Short at the 1991 Academy Awards, but failed to take the statue. I don't imagine, however, that Nick Park would have despaired; he lost out to a film called 'Creature Comforts'... directed by Nick Park!

Wallace And Gromit are excellent! The film is great, it's got some excellent comedy in the film. The story is a quite odd one, but nonetheless it's great. You can't take a short film like this seriously, it's all in good fun.

I think Nick Park and his crew did an excellent job with this film. I would definitely recommend this film to anyone and everyone, besides, it's only 20 minutes or so. After you watch this film, be sure to check out the other Wallace and Gromit films. If you really like this film and the others, be sure to check out "Chicken Run". Hope you enjoy the film, thanks for reading,

-Chris

Wallace and Gromit are a phenomenon. How many stop motion animation films win Oscars, top the US and UK box office charts etc. But all that came later.

A Grand Day Out was the first Wallace and Gromit film. Low budget. More or less a graduation piece. Of course the animation is less sophisticated than in the later films. Of course the plot is a little shallow. The entire story is designed to minimise the need for sophisticated animation and to maximise the excuse for shortcomings (perhaps dogs and people would move a bit like that on a cheese moon).

Yet it is extraordinary to see how much of the Aardman genius is already there in this short film. Hilarious and clever references to other films. Mice in shades for take off. The rocket handbrake gag. Coin-operated machine gags (brilliantly recycled in Were-Rabbit BTW). And a machine (is it an Aga?) that daydreams about skiing when it sees Wallace's holiday magazines.

Of course TWT, ACS and Were-Rabbit are better movies, but this film is so worth seeing as a sign of early genius and indeed in its own right as a crude but wonderful animated film.