I know I’m late to the party (and Lemmy search is rubbish) but I only just got a chance to watch this. I’ve always liked Wallace and Gromit, I always thought the only low point was A Matter of Loaf and Death, which was simply lacking a bit of magic. I was excited to watch this one and kept holding off for the perfect moment but it wasn’t coming so I just watched it when I had the chance.

I won’t go into loads of details but I just found it all quite unappealing. I hate to be crude but the whole thing just felt like it had been made by an American and left me suspecting that Netflix were quite heavily involved in it. It just didn’t feel like Wallace and Gromit, it felt like a Hollywood remake. It was all just so exaggerated and all the subtlety had gone. There were big grand instruments emphasising what was going on, lots of funny camerawork, and they really stressed the personalities of the characters, like how Wallace is an inventor, the relationship between the two, and Wallace being a cheery sort of fellow. And that soppy bit at the end between the two, I don’t know who felt like that had to be in there but that had American corporate thinking all over it. These kind of things were more endearing when they were just unsaid but understood. It just left it coming across like a kids film without the universal appeal. Probably explains why my 5 year old loved it.

I guess it was okay as a film on its own but it was definitely a low point for the series. I think they were trying to make it more accessible to a wider younger audience so they could turn it into a new franchise they could milk for a while.

Anyway, I wouldn’t be moaning so much but all the reviews were raving about it and I’m sat here thinking I watched a different film.

Also, something else I just thought about. Previous entries have been absolutely jam packed with jokes, like every scene was meticulously laid out. In this one they were few and far between, and they weren’t that funny when they came up. I don’t remember laughing once.