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The Wrong Trousers

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The Wrong Trousers
VHS cover, with Feathers McGraw in the foreground
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 dates
  • 17 December 1993 (1993-12-17) (US)
  • 26 December 1993 (1993-12-26) (UK)
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, featuring his characters Wallace & Gromit, and was 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 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 States on 17 December 1993, and the United Kingdom on 26 December 1993 on BBC Two.[3] It was commercially successful, and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1994. It also inspired 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). Feathers McGraw returns in the 2003 video game Wallace & Gromit in Project Zoo and made a background cameo in the 2023 film Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.[4]

On 6 June 2024, it was announced a sequel to the short in the form of a feature film, Vengeance Most Fowl.[5]

Plot

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On Gromit's birthday, Wallace gives him new techno-trousers to take him on walks. When Wallace realises that he does not have enough money to pay off debts, he rents out the spare bedroom to a penguin, who befriends Wallace and drives Gromit from the house. The penguin takes an interest in the trousers, which can also walk on walls and ceilings, and secretly rewires them for remote control. Gromit realises that the penguin is Feathers McGraw, a wanted criminal who disguises himself as a chicken.

Feathers forces Wallace into the techno-trousers and sends him on a test run through town, designed to tire him out and send him back to bed upon returning home. Gromit spies on Feathers as he takes measurements of the city museum, and discovers Feathers' plans to steal a diamond from there. While Wallace sleeps, Feathers marches him to the museum and uses the trousers to infiltrate the building. He uses a remotely operated crane claw contained in a helmet he has made Wallace wear, to successfully capture the diamond, but accidentally triggers the alarm. As Wallace wakes up, 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. He and Wallace pursue Feathers aboard their model train set. Wallace disarms Feathers and accidentally escapes from the trousers. After Feathers' train collides with the trousers, Gromit captures him in an empty milk bottle. They take Feathers to the police station, and he is subsequently imprisoned in the city zoo. Wallace and Gromit pay their debts with the reward money, while the techno-trousers walk off into the sunset.

Reception

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

The Wrong Trousers was voted as the eighteenth-best British television show by the British Film Institute.[6] 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."[7] 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."[8]

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."[9]

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. ^ "Chicken Run 2's ending has a surprise crossover you might have missed". Digital Spy. 22 December 2023. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
  5. ^ "Wallace & Gromit's Christmas 2024 return adds Peter Kay, Reece Shearsmith". Radio Times. Retrieved 7 June 2024.
  6. ^ "The BFI TV 100: 1-100". Archived from the original on 11 September 2011. Retrieved 19 December 2010.
  7. ^ " Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers ". Rotten Tomatoes.
  8. ^ "From Feathers McGraw to Mr Burns: kids' TV's all-time evillest villains". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 June 2024.
  9. ^ 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.
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