| A Close Shave | |
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Wallace and Gromit on their way to wash windows. |
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| Directed by | Nick Park |
| Produced by | Peter Lord David Sproxton |
| Written by | Nick Park |
| Starring | Peter Sallis Anne Reid |
| Music by | Julian Nott |
| Cinematography | Dave Alex Riddett |
| Editing by | Helen Garrard |
| Distributed by | BBC Aardman Animations |
| Release date(s) | December 24, 1995 (UK) |
| Running time | 31 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £1.3 Million |
A Close Shave is a 1995 British animated film directed by Nick Park at Aardman Animations in Bristol, featuring his characters Wallace and Gromit. It was his third half-hour short featuring the eccentric inventor Wallace and his quiet but intelligent dog Gromit, following 1989's A Grand Day Out, and 1993's The Wrong Trousers. It was released theatrically in the United States with Pocahontas.
To celebrate the film's premiere on December 24, 1995, BBC Two's Christmas presentation that year (broadcast from 17 to 22 December) featured Wallace and Gromit. The main ident featured the two (Wallace wears a red crown and Gromit wears a green crown) eating Christmas dinner, with a large blue 2 (the channel's logo) situated in the middle of the table, covered with flashing Christmas lights. Several Christmas themed stings also involving Wallace, Gromit, and the 2 were shown between programmes. The animation of these idents appeared slightly different from other Wallace and Gromit shorts.
Following in the footsteps of its predecessor The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1996.
Contents |
At midnight a mysterious lorry stops by Wallace and Gromit's house, allowing a small sheep the chance to escape. A dog tries to get out, but is pulled back inside the truck again, allowing the sheep to eat things around the house. This causes trouble the next morning for Wallace, who is pelted with porridge because of the sheep chewing on the cord of his breakfast machine. It is also revealed in this short that Wallace and Gromit are running a window-cleaning business; their work brings Wallace into contact with wool shop owner Wendolene Ramsbottom.
Wendolene's father left the wool shop to his daughter "along with his debts, and a few other things." Wallace also learns that he too, was an inventor. Wallace falls in love with Wendolene, but also gets them involved in a sheep-rustling scheme run by Wendolene's sinister dog Preston to provide Wendolene's wool. After coming home, Wallace and Gromit find their home to be in a mess, and discover that the culprit was the sheep who escaped from the truck. They decide to clean him up in Wallace's wash-o-matic, but due to a malfunction, the sheep gets sucked into another invention, Wallace's knit-o-matic, which shears him down. Wallace and Gromit decide to adopt the sheep, and name him "Shaun", after his mishap. They also give Shaun the sweater that was made out of his wool.
Jealous of Gromit, Preston frames him for the thefts and has him sent to a prison for life, but Wallace, Shaun and the sheep (who have been living with Wallace since Gromit's arrest) all stand on each others shoulders (with Wallace at the bottom) and cut through the bars of Gromit's cell with an electric buzz saw, setting him free. Accidentally, Wallace slips on a bar of soap and the stack of friends falls over backwards. Meanwhile, Wendolene becomes upset and angry and orders Preston to stop the sheep thefts but to no avail. Instead, Preston locks her in the back of truck with the intention of turning her (and the sheep) into dog food.
Wallace and Gromit give chase on their motorbike and sidecar, but they soon end up separated; Gromit flies off a 2,000-foot (610 m) drop ledge, but activates the sidecar's plane mode and flies safely on. He then attacks Preston's truck with Wallace's porridge machine held inside the plane. Wallace meanwhile attempts to free Wendolene and the sheep from the truck, but ends up trapped there himself. The truck drives through a secret door and into a large underground hideout, where Preston has built an exact replica of the knit-o-matic and wash-o-matic, having stolen Wallace's blueprints. He attempts to feed his captives into it.
With the help of signals from Shaun, Gromit locates the hideout and attacks Preston head on, firing at him with the porridge gun and flying into him. Shaun then pulls the nozzle to the knit-o-matic over Preston, sucking him into it and giving him a close shave. Midway through the process however, dents appear on the machine, which stops working. Wendolene then reveals that Preston is a robot dog built by her father; although he was created to be good, he turned out evil.
Preston, now a completely robotic dog, advances on Wallace, Wendolene, and the sheep, before he is blinded by his coat being forcibly put back on him. His blundering leads to the group being lifted up towards Preston's Mutton-o-Matic, a dog food processor. Gromit then knocks Preston onto the conveyor belt leading to the machine, with Wallace and the others soon following. Shaun then swings in on an anvil, knocking Preston into the grinders of the machine, where Preston is destroyed.
At the end of the film, Wendolene reveals that Preston was rebuilt with completely normal dog behavior and a remote control. She visits Wallace; however when he invites her in to have cheese with him, he learns to his dismay that she cannot have any because it causes her to break out in a rash. Wallace is distraught ("What's wrong with Wensleydale??") but then decides to console himself with some cheese, only to find Shaun eating it.
As before, the 30 minutes are packed with sight gags and exaggerated physical comedy, as well as a few subtle film parodies. Voice acting was before the sole duty of Peter Sallis (the voice of Wallace), as Gromit is always silent. In 'A Close Shave', Wendolene was introduced as the second speaking character for the series, voiced by Anne Reid.
After A Close Shave, Wallace And Gromit's next major outing was in a set of 10 2½-minute shorts called Cracking Contraptions, each showing one of Wallace's inventions, usually with disastrous results. These appeared on the Internet and were also released as a limited edition Region 2 DVD, later on the Curse of the Were-Rabbit DVD. The sequel to A Close Shave is the feature film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The next major short was A Matter of Loaf and Death, first broadcast in Britain on Christmas Day 2008.
Shaun, the youngest of the flock of sheep in this feature, proved to be a very popular character and was given his own highly successful TV series on the BBC entitled, "Shaun the Sheep" which has also been broadcast worldwide and currently the first two seasons (80 episodes, each approx 7 minutes long) are available on DVD. Though it's never explicitly stated as part of the canon, it can be surmised that Wallace sold off the entire flock to "The Farmer" who owns the farm where Shaun and his friends now reside. Each episode contains slapstick and situational humor with Shaun as the leader of the flock dealing with everyday farm issues while exhibiting a high level of intelligence and human-like behavior to a level much like Gromit.
"Shaun the Sheep" the series itself has spun off another very successful series aimed for toddlers entitled "Timmy Time", Timmy being a baby sheep in Shaun's flock with misadventures of his own.
A Close Shave at the Internet Movie Database
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