{"id":25480,"date":"2025-03-17T00:01:27","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T00:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=25480"},"modified":"2025-03-10T13:03:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T13:03:40","slug":"lets-rank-the-wallace-and-gromit-movies-and-shorts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/17\/lets-rank-the-wallace-and-gromit-movies-and-shorts\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Rank the Wallace and Gromit Movies and Shorts!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ve been on a stop motion animation and Wallace and Gromit kick lately, thanks to watching the new movie on Netflix a month or so ago and playing new games and DLC based on the franchise.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve declared this week to be Wallace and Gromit Week here at GamerDad!\u00a0 All this week we\u2019ll be looking at Wallace and Gromit films and games, and we\u2019ll start off by ranking the movies and shorts!\u00a0 So grab your cheese and crackers and let\u2019s begin!<\/p>\n

But first a bit of history.\u00a0 Wallace and Gromit was made by a studio in the UK called Aardman Animation.\u00a0 They specialize in stop motion clay animation and every time I look up something they do, I\u2019m fascinated by it.\u00a0 Some of their work you may have heard of, like the movie Chicken Run.\u00a0 Or if you\u2019re an old fart like me and remember the music video for the song Sledgehammer, yup, that was Aardman, too.\u00a0 And you know those talking car Chevron and Certa mattress sheep ads?\u00a0 Yup, that was them too.\u00a0 But some of their work is more UK centric, like Morph.\u00a0 But probably their best known work is Wallace and Gromit.\u00a0 It\u2019s about an eccentric cheese loving \u00a0inventor named Wallace, and his loyal, intelligent, yet silent dog Gromit, and they have lots of charming adventures together.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been a fan of stop motion clay animation.\u00a0 Yes I do have other interests besides video games.\u00a0 One time when I was college age, I even took a just for fun clay animation class!\u00a0 It took us all day to make a few seconds of crappy choppy clay animation of a boy building a snowman, and then a snake comes out of the ground and eats the snowman\u2019s carrot nose, and then the snowman frowns.\u00a0 Guess which character I animated?\u00a0 The snake!\u00a0 I came up with that \u2018story\u2019 too.\u00a0 Anyway, doing that gave me a high appreciation and respect for what Aardman and other studios do.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s take a look at my favorite and least favorite Wallace and Gromit films and shorts.\u00a0 We won\u2019t be looking at the mini episodes, like Cracking Contraptions or World of Invention.\u00a0 Nor will we be looking at the countless ads and spinoffs, like Shaun the Sheep.\u00a0 Otherwise this blog would be way too long. So we\u2019ll just focus on the shorts and movies.\u00a0 We\u2019ll start with my least favorite and end with my top one.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A Matter of Loaf and Death<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Just because this is my least favorite, it doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s bad.\u00a0 In this one, the duo are bakers and using Wallace\u2019s inventions to quickly bake bread and deliver it to the town.\u00a0 But Wallace\u2019s new love interest is actually a mass murderer, killing bakers because she was formerly the Bake-A-Lite bread girl but ate too much bread and got too heavy to ride her balloon!\u00a0 So Gromit has to figure out how to stop her.\u00a0 I think the reason why I don\u2019t like this one as much is because the villain isn\u2019t as charming as the others.\u00a0 She\u2019s pretty mean and meets a grisly demise, too.\u00a0 This was also the first short to not win an award since the first one.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. A Grand Day Out<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      This one wasn\u2019t bad either, but since it was the first one, it\u2019s a bit rough compared to the others.\u00a0 Wallace and Gromit are on holiday, but they run out of cheese and all the shops are closed.\u00a0 So they decide to build a rocket to the moon to get more cheese.\u00a0 And that\u2019s pretty much it.\u00a0 It\u2019s still pretty amazing that one person did this all the way back in 1989!\u00a0 The only reason why this didn\u2019t win the Academy Award for best animated short that year is because the same guy made another short that won called Creature Comforts!<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        This was the first Wallace and Gromit movie and it was darn good.\u00a0 In it, the town is abuzz about the upcoming vegetable growing competition, but an infestation of rabbits has gotten everyone on edge.\u00a0 Wallace and Gromit are running a humane pest control service and catch all the rabbits, but decide to use Wallace\u2019s new invention, a mind control machine, to make the rabbits not like vegetables anymore so they can free them.\u00a0 It goes wrong, and now the town has to deal with a Were-Rabbit!\u00a0 Now the duo has to figure out how to stop it, and it\u2019s made even trickier once they find out who it is!\u00a0 The movie is like a horror film for kids, and it also has quite a bit of hidden adult humor as well.\u00a0 And it won another Oscar!<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. The Wrong Trousers<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          This was actually the first Wallace and Gromit short I ever saw.\u00a0 I watched it on PBS and didn\u2019t know what it was at first. \u00a0I tried to describe it to my college roommate and his girlfriend (now wife) because it was pretty amazing.\u00a0 And then we went to a movie store that was selling Wallace and Gromit merchandise and I said to them, \u201cThat\u2019s it!\u201d\u00a0 Then I bought a T-shirt with Wallace on it saying, \u201cCracking Toast, Gromit,\u201d and wore it all through college.\u00a0 To some, this is the most iconic short. In it, the duo are having trouble paying bills so they rent out a room to a penguin.\u00a0 It\u2019s also Gromit\u2019s birthday and Wallace gets him a pair of \u201cTechno Trousers\u201d that walk on their own so Gromit can go for walkies with them.\u00a0\u00a0 But the penguin is actually evil and uses the trousers with Wallace in them to steal a diamond from the museum.\u00a0 This short has the most amazing chase scene in any film you will ever see!\u00a0 It also won an Oscar.\u00a0 A lot of people will claim that this is their favorite, but I\u2019ve got two more I like.<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            This is the most recent one, a movie that came out earlier this year on Netflix.\u00a0 It\u2019s a sequel to The Wrong Trousers.\u00a0 Normally when I watch a movie, I don\u2019t feel like I need to watch it again for a long while.\u00a0 But I\u2019d watch this one again in a heartbeat, that\u2019s how much I liked it.\u00a0 Wallace has invented a new AI Gnome to do gardening around the house, and everyone in town likes it so much that he hires it out to make more money.\u00a0 But the evil penguin from The Wrong Trousers finds out about this and hacks into the gnome from his zoo prison and uses it to make an army of gnomes to steal the diamond again and get revenge on Wallace and Gromit.\u00a0 If I had any problems with this movie, it\u2019s that the plot was too much like The Wrong Trousers.\u00a0 But it does have a really good message about how machines shouldn\u2019t be used for everything.\u00a0 I\u2019m kind of sad it didn\u2019t win the Oscar for best animated movie this year.\u00a0 I guess I need to see Flow and see if that one is really better.\u00a0 But my personal bias can\u2019t imagine it being any better than this!<\/p>\n

              \n
            1. A Close Shave<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

              Even though this was only a short, it feels like a mini-movie in itself and it also won an Oscar.\u00a0 Wallace and Gromit are window washers, and their new client is a wool shop.\u00a0 There is a wool shortage in town, but this shop has enough wool.\u00a0 Hmmm.\u00a0 Turns out the owner of the shop, also Wallace\u2019s love interest, and her robot dog are rustling sheep for wool.\u00a0 But the robot dog goes haywire and starts stealing sheep to make dog food, too!\u00a0 And even worse, he frames Gromit for it!\u00a0 So now Wallace and the sheep must break Gromit out of prison and stop the cyber dog Preston!\u00a0 This was the first appearance of Shaun the Sheep, who ended up getting his own spinoff show that\u2019s still running today!\u00a0 And that show got a spinoff starring the youngest sheep, Timmy, in a preschool show called Timmy Time.\u00a0 So Wallace and Gromit is like Mega Man in that even their spinoffs have spinoffs!\u00a0 The first time I saw A Close Shave was at a clay animation film festival in college.\u00a0 My roommate even went with me, which surprised me since I didn\u2019t think he was into that.\u00a0 But I thought it was nice that he went with me anyway.<\/p>\n

              So that\u2019s my ranking of the Wallace and Gromit movies and shorts!\u00a0 In the comment section, tell me YOUR favorites as well!\u00a0 Later!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

              I\u2019ve been on a stop motion animation and Wallace and Gromit kick lately, thanks to watching the new movie on Netflix a month or so ago and playing new games and DLC based on the franchise.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve declared this week to be Wallace and Gromit Week here at GamerDad!\u00a0 All this week we\u2019ll be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25480"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25482,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25480\/revisions\/25482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}