Helga without the H

Almost every year I attempt (with varying degrees of success) to watch as many Oscar nominees as possible before the ceremony. I post half-assed reviews here on my blog, and then at the end I write up some sort of silly analysis, predictions, reactions, etc. The quantity and quality depends entirely on how much time and energy I have each year, and I’m not gonna lie, this year’s already starting pretty dang rough! But let’s see how it goes. Today we turn to:

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

[1 nomination for best animated feature]

Oh man, I really love Wallace and Gromit. Everything Aardman Animations churns out is super solid gold, and this film is no exception. Everything you’ve come to expect from this studio is present in this film, from absolutely hilarious comic gags, to perfect claymation models, to classic British charm. Yup, this movie is exactly like every other W&G movie, which is what makes it so great! Unfortunately, that’s also what makes it not-so-great. No, sorry, I take that backl this movie is great. But also, we’ve seen it before. There’s a reason why W&G movies are consistently nominated in this category, and why they consistently don’t snag the top prize; they’re just too dang consistent.

WAIT! SCRATCH THAT! I looked it up, and turns out they DID win back in 2005 for Curse of the Were-Rabbit (beating out Howl’s Moving Castle!) Okay, so the academy has, at least once, acknowledged the superiority of this incredible studio. That is good.

But the point is, while these films are consistently solid, they are also formulaic. They have a solid winning formula, they execute is perfectly, so why change? But this year the film is up against some seriously tough competition, with films that are trying something new an innovative. I know I have an obvious bias towards Flow, but the truth is that even if I didn’t, it was trying something new and different. Wallace and Gromit is a cartoon; but Flow and Wild Robot are films. There’s just no competition here.

All that being said, if you like W&G films, definitely catch this one. The evil penguin is back doing hilariously evil things from its jail cell (aka its pen at the zoo.), and W&G have more ridiculous inventions. But the new star here is the mechanical garden gnome that Wallace invents to assist Gromit with his garden (which, predictably, ends up ruining the garden and shearing away Gromit’s sanity.) Unsurprisingly, the robot ends up getting reprogrammed to become evil, and it’s up to Gromit to save the day. This robot is absolutely hilarious; you’re gonna love it.