Close Shave Review / The Question of Loaf and Death – Wallace and Gromit have tied up a cracked double bill | film

nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit animation has an amazing ability to deliver an action-adventure feature film in just 30 minutes with a romantic subplot and loads of great visual gags, and Close shave (★★★★★) from 1995 is just another example of this. The situation is that Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) is working on his latest invention in his basement, a giant machine that, like a cauldron the size of a small house, automatically shears sheep and knits the product into beautiful sweaters.

While they wait for this to work out, Wallace and Gromit run a window cleaning business, and in this capacity they meet Wendolyn Ramsbottom (voiced by Anne Reid) who owns a wool selling business and is strangely unaffected by the wool shortage. Wallace falls in love with the beautiful Wendolen, and their intensely English, shy romance forms an ironic counterpoint to the fact that Wendolen is forced by her evil dog, Preston, to be complicit in that hideous dog’s sheep-stealing acts – with the result that an escaped sheep finds its way into Wallace and Gromit’s home.

It’s huge fun with hints of Indiana Jones, Thunderbirds and The Terminator, and there’s some great humor with the newspapers Gromit is seen reading; One of them, the Daily Lamb Post, had a theater review column on its back page by no less a person than Charles Spencer. Don’t tell me the former theater critic for the Daily Telegraph was working in those days? Or is he the brother of the late Princess Diana?

The issue of loaf and death (★★★★★)) From 2008, Park reunited with Doctor Who veteran Bob Baker, his long-time writer whose name inspired this bread-related tale. It’s a Hitchcockian thriller with cheeky nods to the saucy titular moment from Ghost, the bomb disposal scene from Adam West’s Batman: The Movie 1966, and the grisly iron gag from The Silence of the Lambs. Once again, the big-hearted Wallace has fallen in love, and as is often the case in the W&G franchise, Gromit silently resents this interference in his friendly interspecies relationship with Wallace.

However, Wallace and Gromit have a new business on the go: a bakery with the brand name Top Bun, whose brisk production schedule, driven by a massive windmill attached to the front of their small house, suggests that Wallace has finally found a commercial application for his inventions. But he seems strangely unfazed by rumors of a serial killer targeting bakers.

The film begins with a classic murderous scene of the victim about to meet a terrible end. Wallace was infatuated with the formidable Piella Bakewell (voiced by Sally Lindsay), the former poster girl for Bake-O-Lite bakery products (the film gives a somewhat vague clue as to why she was dropped); Gromit may also have feelings for Piella’s fluffy dog ​​Fluffles. But Gromit has good reason to fear Biella’s increasing and coercive control over Wallace. It’s all very silly and uniquely entertaining.