A Close Shave (1995)

Right after watching and loving The Wrong Trousers, I decided to give Park's follow-up a re-watch. I have to say as much as he succeeded with mixing crime and western elements into his last work, he comes short here when it comes to romance and mystery. While the occasional laugh can't be denied to any W&G picture, including this one, the whole sheep rustling mystery plot left me completely unimpressed. While the Wallace-Wendolene love story seems charming at first, mostly due to how she mirrors him so much down to her "dog" reading the paper Gromit-style, it quickly becomes unnecessary and boring (almost cringe-worthy during the "leave-me-alone"-sequence) to the extent that one feels nothing during the final action scene and also their final encounter at Wallace's door. Completely unrelated, even Gromit was surprisingly uninteresting here, to the extent that his prison breakdown, which could have been a huge tearjerker moment, didn't do much for me.The one truly remarkable thing I take from this one are the sheep. Obviously they're very early versions of Park's later work in Shaun the Sheep and Timmy Time, which I both enjoy a lot and would recommend over this one. They pretty much raise every scene they're in, especially the original one funnily being dressed in a pullover of its own wool for most of the movie. However, unless you're huge claymation fan, you can do without this half hour.

The wrong trousers is my overall favourite but this would be 2nd slightly aka as close as a drop of water. It's good for reasons why the wrong trousers is good. Great villain, excellent laughs, even better score and some of the best Wallace phrases. Wallace has been through some love interests and this is the best in my opinion. This is in my opinion the best of gromit with some great mystery and funny sheep with I guess was so popular that they got their own show. My favourite scene is where Wallace is reading the newspapers. I also love the climaxIt's the saddest with gromit in jail and Wallace's expressions and especially gromit's. It's a great film with some good old Wallace and gromit humour aka sheep falling on Wallace I truly recommend it!

Just thinking about stop motion animation makes one think of a slow and tedious process of moving everything in the frame scene by scene. It takes forever (seemingly), and just two years after Wallace and Gromit's last adventure, we get this superbly animated, well thought out short film, that is actually as exciting as many live action adventure pictures. Proof that Nick Park and crew are about quality, because after the success of "the Wrong Trousers" it would be easy to cash in on a less than great installment, but thankfully for us, that's not the case.A mysterious wool shortage has plagued the town where Wallace and Gromit, who are now cleaning windows, live. What lies before this man and dog duo is a love interest, a sheep rustling murderous dog, and a lot of sheep. When thinking of the original three Wallace and Gromit shorts, I've always put this one and the Wrong Trousers nearly on par as perfect shorts, and while I still feel that way, this one falls a little short of their second adventure, and yet this has nothing really wrong with it to make it worse. When you have two perfect shorts, one is going to probably be favored over the other, and the lack of talking and pure clay animated suspense that "Wrong Trousers" produced stands above this equally wonderful, but more grandiose outing. Either way, this is seriously great, and one of the greatest short films out there.The animation has improved greatly since "The Wrong Trousers". The animation is smoother, the sets are more three dimensional and the town in which they live in is given more of a personality, and fingerprints aren't as prominent on the figures. And the animation on the action sequences is superb. The last film gave us the hilarious train sequence, and this one gives us many action sequences, most notably being the motorcycle chase and the oatmeal machine gun shootout which are both spectacular and hilariously implausible. The whole five (or so) minute chase scene in the film is seriously as interesting, well thought out, and action packed as most regular action flicks, and it manages to be so without any violence or explosions. Truly a testament to the writing and animation of this thing.Composer Julian Nott is also a huge part of this film. His music sounds like a mix of suspenseful thriller music, and a German polka...an unlikely combination, but one that fits so perfectly, giving the scenes a playful bounce, along with a "something bad is going to happen" feel. A new addition to the score for this film that wasn't in the previous two was the love theme which is almost a parody of love themes, but one that stands on it's own and also works perfectly in the scenes.Wallace and Gromit represent not just quality animation, but also top notch writing, well thought out jokes and gags, fantastic direction from Nick Park, and proof that animation is not just for kids. Nick Park and the team at Aardman animation can easily be thought of as the Pixar team of England.My rating: **** out of ****. 31 mins. Not rated, but good for the whole family.

This time, Wallace and Gromit take in a lost sheep named Sean, and get drawn into a sheep-rustling conspiracy. As always, there's a plethora of wacky inventions (namely the motorcycle sidecar). I think that my favorite scene was when Gromit was reading "Crime and Punishment" (check out the author's name). Nick Park certainly always knows how to come up with something clever in these cartoons, and you'd better believe that he does just that in "Wallace & Gromit in A Close Shave". Park showed the talent that he previously brought to "Creature Comforts" and would later bring to "Chicken Run". You just might think twice about using wool after seeing this movie. Really cool.