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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 directed and co-written 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 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, recruits Wallace by using his robotic trsouers to steal a diamond from the city museum.

The Wrong Trousers debuted in the UK on 26 December 1993 on BBC Two.[3] It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1994. It was followed by A Close Shave (1995), The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), and A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008).

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 his 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 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, and Wallace pays his debts with the reward money. The discarded techno trousers reactivate and walk off into the sunset.

Production

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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.[4] David Sproxton, the co-founder of Aardman and the producer of the Wallace & Gromit films, said that The Wrong Trousers was "a whole league higher up the food chain in terms of production values and storytelling" compared to A Grand Day Out.[5]

Whereas Park wrote most of A Grand Day Out, for The Wrong Trousers he worked with the Doctor Who writer Bob Baker.[5] Baker took ideas from Park's sketchbooks, suggesting they make a drawing of a penguin the villain.[5] Park wanted to include a chase on a model railway, feeling it would be funny to stage a Hollywood-style action sequence in a living room, so Baker suggested they make a heist film with the train as the denouement.[5] Sproxton described it as film noir, likening the alley scenes to Alfred Hitchcock.[5] Feeling that most stop-motion animation used bland lighting, the animators tried to light the sets as if they were making a live-action thriller.[5] The animators could not review their footage until it was developed in a separate studio in London. The first cut was 38 minutes long.[5]

Reception

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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, the American filmmaker David O. Russell cited the climactic train sequence as an influence on his direction of the action in Three Kings (1999). The British filmmaker Danny Boyle said it was one of the greatest action sequences.[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". Archived from the original on 31 January 2022. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
  2. ^ "Aardman Animations – A Close Shave". telepathy.co.uk. Archived from the original on 20 July 2023. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  3. ^ "The Wrong Trousers (1993)". BFI. Archived from the original on 19 October 2012. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  4. ^ Sallis, Peter (18 September 2008). Fading into The Limelight. Orion. ISBN 978-1-4091-0572-5.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Shoard, Catherine (21 August 2023). "Say cheese! Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers at 30 – in pictures". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 8 January 2025.
  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. Archived from the original on 26 August 2022. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  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.[better source needed]
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