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Dom Robinson reviews
- Cert:
- Cat.no: BBCDVD 1034
- Running time: 82 minutes
- Year: 1989/93/95
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
- Chapters: 18 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English for the hard of hearing
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- 16:9-enhanced: No
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 5
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Photo Gallery, The Amazing World of Wallace and Gromit,BBC2 Christmas Idents, DVD-ROM content
Cast:
- Wallace: Peter Sallis
Wendolene Ramsbottom: Anne Reid
Shaun the Sheep: Himself
Aardman Animations’ best loved characters Wallace and Gromithave finally arrived on the digital home format, some five years after theywere originally promised to appear on PAL Laserdisc by Encore Entertainment,but cost and copyright constraints would never free them of the chance torelease said product and even if they had it would have cost at least anextra ten pounds than this DVD.
Each of the three films here must be applauded for their simplicity in conceptand the excellence in which the adapations are carried out, including many asight gag.
The first one sees our pair of heroes take A Grand Day Out up to themoon. Wallace, voiced by Last of the Summer Wine‘s Peter Sallis,has run out of cheese, particularly his favourite, Wensleydale. He knows of aplace that has loads going for free – the moon! One rocket ship built laterand once there, they can eat as much as they like, providing they can escapethe wrath of a cooker that’s hot on their tail.
“It’s The Wrong Trousers, Gromit!”, shouts Wallace to his dogas his latest invention, a pair of “techno trousers”, goes haywire. Whiletrying to make ends meet, they let the spare room out to a mysterious figureknown only as The Penguin, who puts those trousers to dastardly deeds, butcan Gromit stop him in time? He’s certainly determined as the new arrivalhas taken his room.
Finally, for A Close Shave, Wallace falls in love for the very firsttime, with the owner of his local wool shop, Wendolene Ramsbottom(Anne Reid), while out on his new window cleaning round. Gromit, onthe other hand, has to put a stop to a sheep-rustling caper orchestratedby an evil robotic guard dog after mastering the art of bungee-jumping.
Presented in the original 4:3 fullscreen ratio, artifacts are nowhere to befound and the picture looks “cracking”, to coin a phrase.The average bitrate is a surprisingly low 3.72Mb/s, varying wildly andoften peaking quite high.
The sound, in standard Dolby Surround, generally has some decent surroundsound effects when the action gets going, but does have plenty of quietmoments 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 a24-picture Photo Gallery.
Eight BBC2 Christmas Idents from last year are included which is abrilliant little addition and the DVD-ROM content is a sample of thePC CD-ROM, Wallace and Gromit: Fun Pack 2. However, this doesn’t wantto install on my Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM for some reason, and when it comesto 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 aresubtitles in English for the hard of hearing.
All the menus are silent and static which was quite a surprised. I’d haveexpected the BBC to go to town on these.
The three Wallace and Gromit short films on this DVD.
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 onecollection.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.