10 / 10
Official trailer
Nick Park directed A Close Shave, the third Wallace and Gromit short. Wallace and Gromit have started a window-washing service while sheep disappear from local farms, and Wallace has fallen for Wendolene Ramsbottom, the owner of a wool shop.
The plot involves a corrupt cyber-dog named Preston, mechanized sheep-rustling, and a chase across the countryside that culminates in Gromit flying the detached sidecar as an airplane while Wallace is trapped in Preston’s truck. The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 68th Academy Awards in 1996, the second consecutive Wallace and Gromit short to win the award after The Wrong Trousers in 1993.
Aardman Animations produced. The production team had grown by the third short but Park remained the central creative force. Every aspect of the production reflects his sensibility, including the introduction of Shaun the sheep, who would later spin off into his own franchise.
Thirty minutes has never felt this full to me. Every frame is packed with jokes, Gromit acts more with nothing but his brow than most live-action stars manage with their whole faces, and I’m grinning from start to finish.
The Sheep
The film introduces Shaun the sheep, who has been a Wallace and Gromit auxiliary character ever since. Shaun is the sheep Wallace rescues from Preston’s mechanized truck and accidentally adopts.
His name is a pun. Wallace shears him and tells Gromit he’s a “shaun sheep.” Gromit’s face in response is among the best individual reactions in stop-motion history. The character has been popular enough to support his own television series and two feature films across the later thirty years.
Gromit’s deadpan look at that pun is my favorite single gag in the short, and it shows how much Park trusts silence to sell the joke.
The decision to introduce a character who would become this significant in a thirty-minute short is the kind of long-term thinking most franchise builders don’t attempt.
Park and Aardman didn’t know Shaun would matter. They built him into the story because the story needed a sheep. The character’s later prominence is a happy accident of the original design being durable enough to support expansion.
For Writers
Strong supporting characters can outgrow their original purpose. Shaun was a supporting character in A Close Shave. He’s now the protagonist of multiple feature films and a long-running television series. The transition was possible because the character was realized in detail instead of generically functional. The lesson is to invest in supporting characters as if they might become protagonists. The ones with distinct traits, reactions, and points of view are the ones that can carry their own work later.
Preston
Preston ranks among the great villains in animation history despite appearing for under thirty minutes.
He’s a black robotic dog who has been disguising himself as a real dog working for Wendolene. The reveal that Preston is mechanical instead of biological happens when he’s sucked into his own Knit-o-Matic. Underneath is a chrome skeleton with red eyes. The Wallace and Gromit canon has few more memorable images.
The character works because the script lets him be both menacing and slightly pathetic.
Wendolene’s late father built Preston. He’s gone rogue. He can’t help his nature any more than Gromit can. The third-act sequence in which his own meat-processing machine destroys Preston is properly gruesome for a children’s film. Park doesn’t soften the consequences for the audience or for Preston.
Park earns credit for letting Preston’s end be this grim. A timid children’s film would’ve let him slink off into the hills, and the short is braver and funnier because it doesn’t.
For Writers
A villain whose nature isn’t entirely his fault is more interesting than a villain who chose his evil. Preston is a machine doing what he was built to do. He can’t stop. The pathos of his destruction is part of why the climax works. The lesson is that antagonists who are products of their construction or circumstances can be sympathetic even while being dangerous. The two qualities aren’t in tension. They reinforce each other.
The Chase
The motorcycle and sidecar chase sequence is among the most-quoted action sequences in any animation. Wallace and Gromit give chase on the motorcycle. The sidecar detaches and turns into an airplane, and Gromit takes the chase into the air. The sheep ride in a sheep-shaped vehicle.
Preston pursues in his automated truck. The geography of the chase is clear. Park paces the escalation carefully. He stages the climactic confrontation with Preston’s truck and Wallace’s spinning-blade contraption with the kind of structural clarity that most live-action action films don’t achieve.
The technical labor required to animate this much movement in stop-motion is approximately what animating a full feature film would require in CGI. The sequence is the longest sustained chase in any Wallace and Gromit short.
That chase is the section I’d show anyone who thinks stop-motion is quaint. It’s faster and clearer than most live-action action, and it’s funny the whole way through.
For Writers
Action sequences in animation can be choreographed with a precision that live-action sequences can’t match because the animator controls every frame. Aardman uses this control to make the geography of the chase legible at every moment. The audience always knows where each vehicle is, what each driver wants, and what the obstacles are. The lesson is that complex action in any medium benefits from absolute clarity of position and intent. Confusion in an action sequence is a writer’s failure.
Craft Note
Nick Park directed and wrote, with Bob Baker. Peter Sallis voiced Wallace. Anne Reid voiced Wendolene. Aardman Animations produced. Originally broadcast on BBC December 1995. Won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 68th Academy Awards in 1996. Approximately thirty-minute runtime. Introduced Shaun the sheep, who later spun off into his own franchise.
Is Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave as good as people say?
10/10. A Close Shave is thirty minutes of Aardman and Nick Park at the top of their game, and I can’t find a thing I’d change. The chase is a small miracle of stop-motion labor, Preston is a villain I’d put up against anything in animation, and Shaun’s introduction launched a franchise almost by accident. Watch it, then watch the rest of the Wallace and Gromit shorts.
