Animated Scene Analysis - Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers Pt. 1 (Or, How I Learned to Get Over My Fear of Stop Motion Animation)

Okay, animation fans, what I’m going to say next will make you mad. But please, hear me out and try to understand. As a kid, I hated stop motion. I hated stop motion because I thought they were creepy. The way those obviously nonliving puppets were moving in stilted, jerky manner scared me so much, especially when they would look at me with those vacant eyes! So naturally, I had no real interest in watching films like Wallace and Gromit (of course, I also thought the characters looked too silly for me to want to watch – yes, I was quite a cynic as a kid) Then one day, in my elementary school’s English class, the teacher showed us a movie called, to my shock, Wallace and Gromit. Inwardly, I was hoping – actually pleading – that we would be watching something else, but alas, there is nothing you can do when your teacher decides what movie to watch for class and no one is there to complain.

When the first movie A Grand Day Out started, I could not believe what I was seeing; what, a man and a dog build a rocket out of wood just to get a sample of the Moon which is (of course) made of cheese?! But by the time the duo had encounter with that strange moon machine, I was still sitting, oddly captivated by either The Cooker’s policeman-like need to catch the perpetrators who desecrated his home or Wallace and Gromit’s desperation to get away from a potential threat. When The Wrong Trousers was playing, I found myself at the edge of my seat, worrying how the two will beat that evil penguin and those scary mechanical pants. By the time A Close Shave was showing, I was won over. I adored the cute little sheep. I hated the evil dog. And I was hoping that Gromit would break out of prison and beat the horrible dog with his awesome plane.

Over the course of those three films in two class periods, Wallace and Gromit left an impression on my childhood self. But did that make me get over my irrational fear of stop motion? Somewhat, but that is a story for another post. Also, it wouldn’t be until many years later that I would rediscover and fall in love with the cheese-loving inventor and his long-suffering dog. Now, as an animation fan, I have endless respect and admiration for Aardman Studios for Wallace and Gromit and the body of work they have produced over the years. So for my second Animated Scene Analysis post, I decided to analyze a stop-motion animated film considering that my first post was a hand-drawn film. And what better film to pick than the one that first helped me to get over my stop motion phobia, The Wrong Trousers?