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The Wrong Trousers

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The Wrong Trousers
VHS cover
Directed byNick Park
Written byNick Park
Bob Baker
Brian Sibley
Produced byChris Moll
StarringPeter Sallis
CinematographyTristan Oliver
Dave Alex Riddett
Edited byHelen Garrard
Music byJulian Nott
Production
companies
Distributed byBBC Enterprises
Release date
  • 26 December 1993 (1993-12-26)
Running time
29 minutes[1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£650,000[2]

The Wrong Trousers is a 1993 British stop-motion animated short film co-written and directed by Nick Park, produced by Aardman Animations in association with Wallace and Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol, Lionheart Television and BBC Children's International. It is the second film featuring the titular duo, eccentric inventor Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) and his dog Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989). In the film, a villainous penguin, Feathers McGraw, posing as a lodger, recruits Wallace by using his techno-trousers to steal a diamond from the city museum.

The Wrong Trousers debuted in the United Kingdom on 26 December 1993 on BBC Two.[3] It was critically and commercially acclaimed, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1994, also inspiring a charity fundraising day, known as "Wrong Trousers Day", one of several events.

The Wrong Trousers was followed by A Close Shave (1995), The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), and A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008). McGraw returns in the video game Project Zoo (2003) and the film Vengeance Most Fowl (2024),[4] as well as a background cameo in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023).[5]

Plot

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For his birthday, Wallace gives his dog Gromit a pair of robotic "techno-trousers" to take him on walks. To pay off debts, Wallace lets a room to a penguin, who befriends Wallace and drives Gromit out of the house. The penguin takes an interest in the trousers, which can walk on walls and ceilings, and secretly rewires them for remote control. Gromit discovers the penguin is Feathers McGraw, a wanted criminal who disguises himself as a chicken by donning a red rubber glove on his head.

Feathers forces Wallace into the trousers, sends him through town to tire him out, then sends him to bed. Gromit spies on Feathers as he takes measurements of the city museum, and discovers his plans to steal a diamond. While Wallace sleeps, Feathers marches him to the museum in the trousers. He infiltrates the building and captures the diamond, but triggers the alarm, waking Wallace. Feathers marches him back to the house and traps him and Gromit in a wardrobe at gunpoint.

Gromit rewires the trousers to break open the wardrobe, and he and Wallace pursue Feathers aboard their model train set. Wallace disarms Feathers and frees himself from the trousers. After Feathers' train collides with the trousers, Gromit captures him in a milk bottle. Feathers is imprisoned in the city zoo, Wallace and Gromit pay their debts with the reward money, and the now-discarded techno-trousers reactivate and walk off into the sunset.

Production

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Wallace and Gromit sculpture, depicting The Wrong Trousers, at the Market Hall in Preston, Lancashire

Production began in 1990. Sallis felt that The Wrong Trousers was based very loosely on Topkapi; he regarded the film as his favourite of the Wallace & Gromit films.[6]

Reception

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The Wrong Trousers was voted as the eighteenth-best British television show by the British Film Institute.[7] The film has an approval rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 26 reviews, and an average score of 9.1/10. The critical consensus reads, "An endearing and meticulous showcase of stop motion animation, The Wrong Trousers also happens to be laugh-out-loud funny."[8] The film was awarded the Grand Prix at the Tampere Film Festival, and the Grand Prix at the World Festival of Animated film – Animafest Zagreb in 1994. The Wrong Trousers won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1994. In 2024, Michael Hogan in The Guardian's list of greatest Kid's TV villains ranked Feathers McGraw number one, writing, "The definitive screen villain of our age is a penguin with a red rubber glove on its head. The gun-toting, 3ft tall criminal mastermind first terrorised viewers in 1993 Oscar-winning short The Wrong Trousers. ... The fact that he's mute with expressionless beady eyes only makes him more terrifying."[9]

During a 2016 directors' roundtable interview conducted by The Hollywood Reporter, American filmmaker David O. Russell cited the climactic train sequence as an influence on his direction of the action in Three Kings (1999); British filmmaker Danny Boyle agreed that it was "one of the greatest action sequences I've ever seen."[10]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Aardman Animations Present Wallace and Gromit in Nick Park's the Wrong Trousers".
  2. ^ "Aardman Animations – A Close Shave". telepathy.co.uk. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  3. ^ "The Wrong Trousers (1993)". BFI. Archived from the original on 19 October 2012. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  4. ^ "Wallace & Gromit's Christmas 2024 return adds Peter Kay, Reece Shearsmith". Radio Times. Retrieved 7 June 2024.
  5. ^ "Chicken Run 2's ending has a surprise crossover you might have missed". Digital Spy. 22 December 2023. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
  6. ^ Sallis, Peter (18 September 2008). Fading into The Limelight. Orion. ISBN 978-1-4091-0572-5.
  7. ^ "The BFI TV 100: 1-100". Archived from the original on 11 September 2011. Retrieved 19 December 2010.
  8. ^ " Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers ". Rotten Tomatoes.
  9. ^ "From Feathers McGraw to Mr Burns: kids' TV's all-time evillest villains". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 June 2024.
  10. ^ The Hollywood Reporter (4 January 2016). Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Danny Boyle, & More Directors on THR's Roundtables I Oscars 2016. Retrieved 16 September 2024 – via YouTube.[better source needed]
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