Sixteen years may have passed since their last appearance, but they haven't aged a day. Frozen in his eternal 40s, the former remains as eccentric and introverted as on day one while time has taken nothing away from or added nothing to the latter's wisdom and pessimism. Such immutability is the advantage of clay stars over their flesh-and-blood rivals.

So much so, that when Wallace and Gromit reunite for Vengeance Most Fowl, their sixth adventure and second feature-length film, we feel rejuvenated. The Lancashire inventor, still wearing his sleeveless V-neck sweater, and his anxious, patient beagle (making him a distant cousin of Snoopy) would have been enjoying quite tranquil days if Wallace hadn't developed the most sophisticated of his inventions: Norbot, a robot with the physique of a garden gnome and extraordinary topiary talents. Gromit is wary of the intrusion of artificial intelligence into a hobby that has hitherto been the preserve of the British suburbanite, and once again tries to warn his master of the perils that lie ahead.

All the virtual cataclysms Norbot embodies come to fruition when Wallace and Gromit's fiercest enemy takes control of him from the zoo pond, where he is serving the sentence handed down to him at the end of The Wrong Trousers (1993). You'll recognize Feathers McGraw as the dead-eyed one-armed, unscrupulous criminal.

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