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Very well executed

Very Cool!!!

To me, this movie is perfection.

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Although my favourite Wallace & Gromit film will always be THE WRONG TROUSERS, a 30 minute short which got absolutely everything right - I remember wearing out my old VHS tape of it - Nick Park originally made the characters back in the 1980s and their first outing was this 1989 short. It's a slightly cruder version of the characters we've come to know and love over the years, but the magic is there from the beginning and the seeds of greatness were sown here.The story is quite simplistic in this film and lacks the kind of quick-fire gags that the series became known for. The warm character humour is missing even though Peter Sallis is a delight as Wallace. The best thing about the film is Gromit, who seems to have appeared on the screen fully formed, while the doughy-headed Wallace needed a little more tinkering before achieving perfection in THE WRONG TROUSERS (the bit where he descends the cellar steps looks really, really dodgy). The trip to the moon is light and fluffy but there are some suitably bizarre elements to keep it moving. Needless to say, the Claymation effects are huge fun.

Modelling clay/Plasticine animation was nothing new at the time of this project -- remember "Davey and Goliath"? But Park had something more ambitious in mind.Here, the inventor (Park) fabricates a world from scratch and places his alter-ego (Wallace) in it...he's an inventor, too. The inventor outside this world engineers this so the inventor within does all of the creating -- Park invents the movie's mechanics by having Wallace invent the movie's mechanics: the spaceship. Simple and brilliant self-reference.What makes this of cinematic interest is the homage to the masters of innovation and invention, notably Welles (the 'Rose Bud' sled from "Citizen Kane"), and the Hitchcockian camera adventure...the spaceship is designed the way H.G. Wells would imagine it -- Wells being the father of science fiction and the early master of abstract thought.So there you have it, a cinematic invention that's all about inventing, and the masters of invention.

This short film was the start of an amazing career for claymation artist Nick Park, in a film involving an inventor and his clever canine. This was the first of the four wallace and gromit movies that he made, which included a rocket, a bizarre robot and of course Wallace's favorite's food... cheese! The plot involves Wallace in search for some cheese. There is none left in the pantry and searching through his magazine of "cheese holidays" and sees an amazing opportunity. This film uses the old "is-moon-really-made-of-cheese?" theory in a cunning way. Wallace, and his clever hound Gromit, construct a big rocket to take them to the moon. Wallace has the time of his life sampling many different cheeses, but an old robot is stirring up problems for them and causing mayhem... if you want to see these problems, get the movie! Fun for the whole family. Considering the production cost of this movie was 11,000 pounds compared to the millions put into the latest movie "the curse of the were-rabbit," this movie is a great achievement. You'll watch it again for sure!"

STAR RATING: ***** The Works **** Just Misses the Mark *** That Little Bit In Between ** Lagging Behind * The Pits In this debut effort for Nick Park's beloved man and dog, they are forced to fly to the moon when good old Wallace runs out of cheese.As well as being the shortest feature at just 22 minutes, this W/G adventure is also the earliest and it kinda shows. The plasticine animation is a little creaky and funny here, sort of reminiscent of the Mork animation about the little man in the box.Admirable though the craftsmanship behind it is, I've never actually been hugely into Wallace & Gromit (maybe a bit too clean and traditional for someone of my generation.) The only one I've really enjoyed is The Wrong Trousers (and that was more from when I was younger and less aware of, shall we say, the seedier pleasures of life.) I was driven to actively seek out this early effort due to the resurgence in popularity as a result of the hugely successful recent film adaptation.As technically impressive as the first two (all things considered!) this one lacks the emotional angle it's successors were to possess. That being said, it's fairly good fun as a first try and certainly set the standard for greater things to come. Two stars, but a good two stars. **