Linkshoch Wonderful Movie

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

bscrivener-50810 The final part of the original Wallace & Gromit trilogy. A Close Shave packs the charm, humour and love that we had for the previous two in an all new adventure. This third part gives us a shift in tone and change of theme, briefly delving into horror and thriller elements (intended as a parody) while retaining its comedic and childish subject matter. The story follows Wallace's latest line of business, window-cleaning and his collection of quirky new inventions. While on a job he meets Wendoline, a local shop- keeper in which the two become very attached, and also her mysterious and silent pet dog, Preston. Gromit, instantly becoming suspicious of Preston begins to investigate him after a sheep, escaped the previous night from the truck he was driving and broke into their home. Gromit is then later framed by Preston for being a sheep killer and is imprisoned for life. Separating him from Wallace in a similarly emotional scene to The Wrong Trousers. After Wallace with the help of the escaped sheep (Shaun) bust out Gromit and later come across Preston and Wendoline in a field, sheep- rustling they chase them down before Wallace and Wendoline become trapped and leaving Shaun and Gromit to save the day. After a final showdown, the film closes with Wendoline and Wallace parting ways (after humorously she dislikes cheese. Also noting she isn't a good fit due to her criminal behaviour.) While A Close Shave is generally a family-friendly and fun film to all to enjoy. Unlike it's predecessor it does have a few flaws. The first being too many sub- plots which seem to overcrowd the story, leaving to scenes such as Wendoline and Wallace's relationship and Gromit's imprisonment feeling rushed and under developed. Furthermore, the final showdown between Preston and Gromit felt underwhelming, making Preston's intimidating and dominating presence feel diminished. However, A Close Shave definitely deserves praise for its shift into darker themes while keeping it's childish humour and wit, as well as the introduction of more beloved characters such as Shaun the Sheep. 8/10

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) 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.

Robert The first one was okay, it featured the moon. It was cheesy and didn't really have a plot, although the oven creature was interesting to watch. The second was a lot better, involving a penguin who was a bad guy. However, this third was a VERY big improvement. Sheep that are lost, an evil dog robot, a girl that the main character falls in love it. It's all there. With intense scenes and a lot of drama! One of the key improvements was the amount of special effects done. Sure, most of it was pure clay on frame by frame with camera work. But they added some special effects to enhance the clay world and digital world together. Some include the sparks the sheep's chainsaw produced. And when the dog was flying. These were very great improvement! The thing that gets me is the main character's absolute lack of intelligence, and the dog's intellectual yet still emotional behavior. Even the creator said that was the plan. It's funny and annoying, but just annoying enough to make it almost not funny. Hence the 9/10.

Tommy Nelson 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.