Wallace and Gromit are a comedy equivalent of Usain Bolt’s 100 meters, you know the result before they start and it’s all over rather too quickly. In this story Wallace’s nemesis is ‘Piella’, the Bake Lite Girl, given some Northern England grit by the voice of Sally Lindsay. Yes, she who played Shelley Unwin in Coronation Street until 2006. She’s a psychopath with intentions to complete her ‘Baker’s Dozen’ (13), after bumping off twelve local bakers. And unfortunately for Wallace, he and Gromit have just started their own baking business, ‘Top Bun’. This all plays on an old TV advert from the 70s with a beautiful girl in a balloon promoting bread, I think Nimble was the product. Except there is little about Piella that’s remotely nimble; she’s expanded like fresh dough since then. Piella takes over Wallace’s life before planning to end it with a bang. This initiates the last ten minutes of complete insanity where everyone runs around in the windmill they built on top of Wallace’s house in pursuit of each other and a bomb. What’s so lovely about Nick Park’s work is how well it withstands a second or more viewings, as there are so many subtle gags and visual details that it’s difficult to catch the first time. Given how relatively few stories Wallace and Gromit have made since A Grand Day Out (1989), that’s not a bad thing. But, curiously, that leaves us with not just Wallace and Gromit, but also Fluffles the poodle, as an addition. Overall it’s not quite as ambitious as the full-featured Curse of the Were-Rabbit but it’s more than enough to keep W&G fans happy this Christmas.
