Dom Robinson reviews
Wallace and Gromit
A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers & A Close Shave
Distributed by
Aardman Animations' best loved characters Wallace and Gromit
have finally arrived on the digital home format, some five years after they
were originally promised to appear on PAL Laserdisc by Encore Entertainment,
but cost and copyright constraints would never free them of the chance to
release said product and even if they had it would have cost at least an
extra ten pounds than this DVD.
Each of the three films here must be applauded for their simplicity in concept
and the excellence in which the adapations are carried out, including many a
sight gag.
The first one sees our pair of heroes take A Grand Day Out up to the
moon. Wallace, voiced by Last of the Summer Wine's Peter Sallis,
has run out of cheese, particularly his favourite, Wensleydale. He knows of a
place that has loads going for free - the moon! One rocket ship built later
and once there, they can eat as much as they like, providing they can escape
the wrath of a cooker that's hot on their tail.
"It's The Wrong Trousers, Gromit!", shouts Wallace to his dog
as his latest invention, a pair of "techno trousers", goes haywire. While
trying to make ends meet, they let the spare room out to a mysterious figure
known only as The Penguin, who puts those trousers to dastardly deeds, but
can Gromit stop him in time? He's certainly determined as the new arrival
has taken his room.
Finally, for A Close Shave, Wallace falls in love for the very first
time, with the owner of his local wool shop, Wendolene Ramsbottom
(Anne Reid), while out on his new window cleaning round. Gromit, on
the other hand, has to put a stop to a sheep-rustling caper orchestrated
by an evil robotic guard dog after mastering the art of bungee-jumping.
Presented in the original 4:3 fullscreen ratio, artifacts are nowhere to be
found and the picture looks "cracking", to coin a phrase.
The average bitrate is a surprisingly low 3.72Mb/s, varying wildly and
often peaking quite high.
The sound, in standard Dolby Surround, generally has some decent surround
sound effects when the action gets going, but does have plenty of quiet
moments too.
Extras :
First up is a 15-minute featurette, The Amazing World of Wallace and Gromit,
in which their creator Nick Park tells all about his characters and a
24-picture Photo Gallery.
Eight BBC2 Christmas Idents from last year are included which is a
brilliant little addition and the DVD-ROM content is a sample of the
PC CD-ROM, Wallace and Gromit: Fun Pack 2. However, this doesn't want
to install on my Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM for some reason, and when it comes
to the wallpaper files, my PC just indicates they're not valid bitmap files,
so what's wrong with them?
Each film contains six chapters, totalling 18 which is fine and there are
subtitles in English for the hard of hearing.
All the menus are silent and static which was quite a surprised. I'd have
expected the BBC to go to town on these.
Overall, although there aren't many extras that work fine and are long-lasting,
it's worth twenty quid of anyone's money to get these short films in one
collection.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
