A Close Shave

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A Close Shave
A-close-shave.jpg
US edition VHS cover art
Directed by Nick Park
Written by
Produced by
Starring
Cinematography Dave Alex Riddett
Edited byHelen Garrard
Music by Julian Nott
Production
companies
Distributed by BBC Worldwide
Release date
  • 24 December 1995 (1995-12-24)
Running time
30 minutes [1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
Budget£1.3 million [2]

A Close Shave is a 1995 British stop-motion animated short film co-written and directed by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations with Wallace & Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol and BBC Children's International. It is the third film featuring Wallace & Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989) and The Wrong Trousers (1993). In the film, Wallace and Gromit foil a sheep rustling operation operated by a sinister dog, Preston.

Contents

A Close Shave was acclaimed and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 68th Academy Awards. [3] A spin-off television series based on the Shaun character, Shaun the Sheep , premiered in 2007.

Plot

Wallace and his dog, Gromit, operate a window cleaning business. Wallace falls for the wool shopkeeper Wendolene Ramsbottom. Her sinister dog, Preston, rustles sheep to supply the shop. After a lost sheep wanders into the house, Wallace places him in his Knit-o-Matic, which shears sheep and knits the wool into jumpers. Wallace names the sheep Shaun.

Preston steals the Knit-o-Matic blueprints. When Gromit investigates, Preston captures him and frames him for the sheep rustling. Gromit is arrested and imprisoned, while Wallace's house is inundated with sheep. Wallace and the sheep save Gromit and hide out in the fields. Wendolene and Preston arrive in the lorry to round up the sheep. When Wendolene demands Preston stop the rustling, he locks her in the lorry with the sheep and drives away, intent on turning them into dog food.

Wallace and Gromit give chase on their motorcycle. When Gromit's sidecar detaches, he activates its aeroplane mode and resumes the chase from the air. Wallace becomes trapped in the lorry and he, Wendolene, and the sheep are transported to Preston's dog food factory, where Preston has built an enormous Knit-o-Matic. The captives are loaded into the wash basin, but Shaun escapes. Shaun activates neon signs to reveal the factory's location to Gromit, who attacks Preston. Shaun sucks Preston into the Knit-o-Matic, removing his fur. Wendolene reveals that Preston is a robot created by her deceased inventor father, and his behaviour is a result of him malfunctioning.

When the Knit-o-Matic dresses Preston in a sweater made of his fur, he inadvertently hits the controls, and the group become poised to fall into the mincing machine. Shaun pushes Preston into the machine, crushing him. Gromit is exonerated and Wallace rebuilds Preston as a harmless remote-controlled dog. Afterwards, Wallace is saddened when Wendolene leaves and tells him that she is allergic to cheese. When he tries to cheer himself up with some cheese, he finds that Shaun has eaten it all.

Production

Peter Lord, the co-founder of Aardman, had Park simplify the script to keep the film to 30 minutes. Lord said it once contained "the best scene we ever had to cut", a love scene based on Brief Encounter between Wallace and Wendolene set in Crewe railway station. [4] A spin-off television series based on the Shaun character, Shaun the Sheep , premiered in 2007. [5]

Cast

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, A Close Shave has a perfect score of 100% based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. [6]

References

  1. ↑ "A Close Shave". BBFC .
  2. ↑ "Production History – A Close Shave". Telepathy. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  3. ↑ "The 68th Academy Awards (1996) Nominees and Winners". The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 25 March 1996. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  4. ↑ 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.
  5. ↑ Banks-Smith, Nancy (6 March 2007). "Last night's TV". The Guardian . ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  6. ↑ "A Close Shave". Rotten Tomatoes . Archived from the original on 28 February 2015. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
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