Television
One man and his dog
Ian Hislop
Wallace and Gromit are back in a new film that has cost over a million pounds to produce and which is to be shown by the BBC on Christmas Eve. For anyone who has not already seen them in The Wrong Trousers and A Grand Day Out, I should perhaps explain that Wallace and Gromit are not typical film stars. For a start they are made out of Plasticene. And secondly they can act quite well. Neverthe- less, they have won two Oscars for their creator, Nick Park, and it looks as if A Close Shave (BBC 2, 6.15 p.m.) is well on the way to another one.
Having seen a preview of it this week, I have to say that the new adventure is both technically stunning and immensely enjoy- able. Animation has not always been my favourite medium and the words 'animated film' traditionally mean earnest eastern European cartoons with minimal dialogue and maximum pretension. Happily, Wal- lace and Gromit have banished this stereo- type and replaced it with something gloriously English, understated and enter- taining. Nick Park has in effect created his own genre which is something like 'Ani- mated Plasticene North of England Period Sci-Fi Comedy Thriller'. The film buffs are getting very keen on Park, and at the screening I heard someone mention the words 'Film Noir' in reverend tones, but there is no need for fans to panic. Despite the big budget and the big hype A Close Shave has carefully preserved the unique world of Wallace, the cheese- loving inventor, and his dog Gromit. It has Just expanded the scope a bit. This time there is a romantic interest for Wallace who has set up a window-cleaning business and who falls for Wendolene, the proprietor of the local wool shop. Their Courtship can only be compared to Brief Encounter. But Brief Encounter played by Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood. Gromit of course manages to dispute the more ten- der moments by bungee jumping off the top of the roof with a wet squeegee in order to clean Wendolene's windows. There are plenty of stunts like this and there is even a chase sequence worthy of a Bond film.
Half-way through the action a motorcy- cle sidecar containing Gromit suddenly turns into an aeroplane and Gromit becomes a fighter pilot circling over the town trying to rescue his hapless owner. In fact Gromit looks a bit like Snoopy which is not very useful against his rival dog, Pre- ston, who is more reminiscent of something from the Terminator series. Yet these are allusions lightly worn and they supplement rather than detract from the fun of an orig- inal story. Reassuringly, the most important factor in the film is still ... sheep. The plot con- cerns sheep, the action turns on sheep and the sheep are particularly wonderful. The scene where they form a pyramid on top of the motorcycle is certainly my favourite. The joke about a sheep who had gone through Wallace's Knit-o-matic machine on the 'Close Shave' setting is good too. They call him Sean. (Geddit?) My five-year-old companion at the pre- view liked the sheep too but preferred the Porridge gun to anything else. She thought the film was good but 'quite scary'. In generic terms there was a bit too much Thriller' for her and perhaps not enough ' Animated Plasticene North of England Period Sci-Fi Comedy'. I offer this merely as a small caveat and whilst I am at it I should add that the telling of the plot by use of newspaper headlines is a bit lost on Younger children. Still, older children did not seem to mind the creepy bits much and us very old children enjoyed the whole thing from start to finish. If I had anything to say to Park it would merely be a request not to let the gentler elements get over- shadowed by the undoubted technical bril- liance.
The only other programme that I would call compulsory Christmas viewing is a repeat of The Snowman (Channel 4, Christ- mas Day, 6.30 p.m.). As Christmas tradi- tions go I now find watching this ranks just below Carols from Kings and quite a way above the Queen's speech.
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