Why did I wait a whole year to watch this?

I loved the Wallace & Gromit shorts (A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, released between 1989 and 1995) when they first came out, as well as the claymation duo's first full-length movie, Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), and, to a lesser extent, their offshoot movie Chicken Run (2000) and long-running TV series Shaun the Sheep (2007-2025). So, when Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl popped up among my Netflix recommendations, my wife and I did not hesitate to add it to our watchlist.

And then ... we forgot about it. Sometimes, browsing through the offerings, I'd see it there and remind my wife that we needed to watch it. And, invariably, we'd forget again. Well, it took us a year, but we finally got around to it.

It was worth the wait, although I wish I'd watched it sooner.

The action picks up with the duo's typical shenanigans. Wallace is, as usual, inventing things that work only by the broadest of definitions, but they certainly make his morning routine into a daily adventure. Gromit is, as usual, his long-suffering sidekick, usually knowing better than Wallace what exactly is going on. This time, Wallace unveils his latest invention, Norbot the Garden Gnome, a robot who gardens and handles other odd jobs on command. His debut task is transforming Gromit's carefully tended garden into an over-manicured monstrosity that, of course, catches the eye of Wallace's neighbors. Desperate to make some cash to pay off his inventing debts, Wallace is soon hiring Norbot out to the neighborhood.

Vengeance Most Fowl is a sequel to The Wrong Trousers, in which Feathers McGraw, a penguin cunningly disguised as a chicken, plotted to steal the priceless Blue Diamond but was foiled by the eponymous pair. Now, McGraw is serving a lengthy sentence at a local zoo, but he manages to hack into Wallace's home computer remotely and hijack Norbot's programming, altering his personality to "evil" (why was that even an option in Wallace's original code?!) and ordering him to mass-produce an army of gnomes to carry about a series of thefts, frame Wallace, build a submarine and help Feathers finally steal the Blue Diamond.

Hijinks ensue. And it's hilarious. Even the Farmer of Mossy Bottom Farm (from Shaun the Sheep) makes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance.

Wallace is perfectly voiced by actor Ben Whitehead, who assumed the role after Wallace's original voice actor, Peter Sallis, retired from acting in 2010 and died in 2017. Gromit, of course, is perfectly silent, as is Feathers McGraw. Other vocal talents include Peter Kay as Chief Inspector Mackintosh, Lauren Patel as P.C. Mukherjee, Reece Shearsmith as Norbot and Diane Morgan, aka Philomena Cunk, as TV reporter Onya Doorstep.

At the time of this writing, Vengeance Most Fowl is available only through Netflix and the BBC. If you have access to either, it's definitely worth watching.