FairlyAnonymous

As a long-time fan of Wallace and Gromit, it saddens me to say that Vengeance Most Fowl does not live up to the standard of previous Wallace and Gromit entries and seems to not understand what made the originals so charming and narratively engaging. While this movie has its moments, as a whole it feels a bit muddled and confused, with a general lack of direction and themes.

I'll start off with some highlights before I get into the nitty gritty of why I think this entry misses the mark:

The Good:

• Feathers MacGraw is back and feels like the same character
• The animation (in terms of character acting and movement) is good and accurate to the originals
• There are a few unsettling moments here and there that matches the tone of the original
• There are the beginnings of a few thematically interesting ideas (unfortunately, none of which are explored)

The Bad: Tonally, this doesn't feel like Wallace and Gromit or classic Aardman. This feels more like something in the same vein as Shawn the Sheep where the stakes are low, the humor is light and simple, the cinematography is very basic, and the core audience seems to be much younger, which, unfortunately, is NOT what classic Wallace and Gromit was.

Classic Wallace and Gromit (and early Aardman) was funny and engaging because it mixed high stakes drama, horror, and thriller elements and then mixed them into the mundane and ordinary. A Close Shave is essentially about a serial kidnapper, a femme fatale, and a man's best friend being framed for murder who needs to be broken out of prison. At its core, A Close Shave is a good drama that is funny because it is mixed into the mundane. Chicken Run is a concentration camp/holocaust survival prison escape movie... but with Chickens. The joke is that the stakes are high, the cinematography is serious, the world is dark, but the premise is funny due to the mundane juxtaposing with all of the serious elements. The same goes for Curse of the Were-Rabbit, where it is a horror movie mixed with a mundane and ordinary threat.

Wallace and Gromit doesn't just work because of the characters, but because of how seriously the world is played out and how dramatic it portrays itself. The Wrong Trousers has several shots that would be genuinely horrifying or scary if it weren't about a penguin stealing a pair of mechanical pants.

However, Vengeance Most Fowl, seems to completely misunderstand what makes Wallace and Gromit work and plays the narrative more as a cartoon than as a drama/thriller, which is most easily recognized in the cinematography choices. A Close Shave, for the most part, is a very visually dark and bleak film. Yes, it has its comedy, but there's a big emphasis on shadows and mystery. The Wrong Trousers, equally has a lot of darker elements, shadows, and intense visuals (which are then juxtaposed by the mundane). Vengeance Most Fowl only captures the feeling from the originals on one or two occasions. The best example of this is in The Wrong Trousers where Feathers tries to steal a diamond and the cinematography, lighting, and composition is very dark, intense, and dramatic. In Vengeance Most Fowl there is a scene VERY similar to the one in The Wrong Trousers but the scene is fully lit, flat perspective, and has nothing dramatic or dynamic in the composition. Both scenes are almost identical to each other in premise and set-up but one is intense and brooding while the other is boring and generic slapstick.

In terms of the themes in this movie, it tries to have a few in there but they are so quickly forgotten and mishandled that I doubt anyone even noticed them. The most interesting one was a moment where Wallace almost starts to feel guilty as an inventor and thinks that maybe he is hurting people. On paper this is a great idea for Wallace to have, because I don't think it is something he has really gone through (except for potentially in Curse of the Were-Rabbit) and it would've been an interesting idea to build the movie around this premise. Heck, there could be some really high-stakes if the police in the movie were treated seriously instead of as bumbling buffoons and Wallace is actually treated as a menace to society or something like that; however, that would require the movie to treat society as a "threat" or an "other", which they seem to be veering away from.

All that being said, it's kind of a shame how many missed opportunities this movie has. It had all the potential to be something special or interesting, but at the end of the day it feels more like a generic cartoon instead of Wallace and Gromit.

Glad this movie finally got released and that it is garnering a bunch of attention! I've been following Gints' work since Away and was really excited that he got another film out and especially a much more ambitious film at that.

Pros: I like that the animals act like animals and I like the camerawork (for the most part, but we'll get to that later) as well as the overall atmosphere... and that's about it.

Cons: This movie has a couple of fairly glaring issues in terms of pacing and storytelling. I am all for slow methodical films and long tracking shots, but there also needs to be contrast from scene to scene and significantly different pacing from one shot to another or else every shot feels like the same shot. This movie reuses a LOT of the same shot choices, camera angles, and rhythms in its scenes to a point where one scene doesn't feel distinct or different from the other meaning that there is no direct indication of the severity of each scene unless the music decides to change and indicate that what is happening is exciting or not.

To add to that, the pacing of the movie itself is stretched VERY thin where there clearly isn't enough narrative going on to warrant the run time, which means you have too little narrative told in a very slow and methodical way. I think part of the issue is that the movie is trying to feel natural in its presentation of information, but it also doesn't know how to convey information in a way that surprises the audience. Almost every scene is set-up in such a way that the audience knows what is going to happen 3-10 seconds before it happens, which kills the tension of any scenes that are trying to have tension or intrigue.

In terms of story, themes, and narrative, the movie is... well... it's also lacking. Because its story and drama is so safe and lacks punctuation in tension and drama, there aren't any strong themes or character moments to latch onto except for a few basic outlines of what one could consider a "theme".

Lastly, this isn't necessarily a problem with the movie, but more of an observation: This movie feels like a bunch of indie video game cut-scenes (and doing a quick google search, I am not the first person to make this observation). I love indie games as much as the next person, but it really does convey its information and its story in such a way that it feels like it was paced more so for a player to be PLAYING the movie than it is a movie.

All in all, I'm glad this movie was made and I think it is an achievement that it got made, but I have to be completely fair that I think the Academy and the Annie's are both being unfair by giving it the number of awards that it has. For instance, the movie won "Best Writing" at the Annie's... HOW?!?! This movie has only a 30 page script, no dialogue, almost no themes, and a bare bones narrative (and it beat Inside Out 2 which has one of the best screenplay for an animated film in a long time). I get it that people want to see the underdog (or undercat ) win and people are tired of seeing Disney/Pixar films win all of the awards, but I genuinely think this movie is being overhyped by people who are desperately trying to dethrone bigger film companies.

Dwegons and Leprechauns is in a class of its own when it comes to "so bad it's good movies" and I think this movie has largely been slept on by the "angry critic" community.

The thing that makes Dwegons and Leprechauns special is that it has a certain level of charm to it juxtaposed by incredibly grotesque and bizarre character design choices and hilariously strange editing. You just have to see it to understand what I'm saying, but the movie walks this fine line between almost being adorable but then also being a hilarious trainwreck in almost every way. It really is a unique "bad movie" because most bad movies lack heart and soul to them, but with Dwegons and Leprechauns you can tell the filmmakers genuinely wanted to make a fun family movie and they were completely invested in the world-building of Dwegons.

The closest thing I can compare this movie to is when a child first begins writing their own stories and they get REALLY engulfed in the world, the lore, and the characters themselves, but then entirely ignore any sort of cohesive narrative. Dwegons and Leprechauns is precisely that: A passionate film that loves its characters and its world, but everything else is thrown to the side.

However, just to make things clear, this is still a bad movie in terms of quality:

• The pacing is insane where plot points and actions will come out of nowhere only to become immediately forgotten two seconds later due to the narrative deciding to take a U-turn on a dime,
• The character designs, as mentioned beforehand, are genuinely disgusting most of the time
• The characters themselves, while charming at times, have awkward incredibly dialogue that rarely follows any logical flow
• The lore is downright hilarious at times. There's a reason this movie is called Dwegons and LEPRECHAUNS and it's only for lore reasons that it has that title
• The animation isn't great by any means
• The audio mixing is a little jank, making it hard to hear characters during certain scenes.

• Though, I should mention that the movie has a surprising amount of effort put into the soundtrack at times. When listening to the credits of the movie, there are a few tracks that feel like the last melodies of a dying goose trying to serenade you into believing that it is truly a swan. Again, not fantastic, but certainly a lot more effort put into it than other low quality animated films.

While Dwegons and Leprechauns is still a trainwreck, it is a charming trainwreck that is definitely worth a watch for any fan of bad-movies!