Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Cracking Collection (4K UHD Review)

Reviewed by: Tim Salmons
Review Date: Mar 21, 2025
Format: 4K Ultra HD

Director

Various

Release Date(s)

1989-2005 (December 10, 2024)

Studio(s)

Aardman Animations (Shout! Studios)

Film/Program Grade: See Below
Video Grade: See Below
Audio Grade: See Below
Extras Grade: C+
Overall Grade: C

https://shoutfactory.com/

Review

The history of Aardman Animations goes as far back as the early 1970s when its founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton began creating stop-motion animated segments for British television, but their worldwide recognition truly began in the mid to late 1980s when they started doing commercial work and music videos, most notably the video for Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer. By this time, the company was growing, hiring a fresh-faced Nick Park who had plenty of ideas in mind, and in 1989, two of the company’s most notable successes yet were released: the short films Creature Comforts and A Grand Day Out, the latter starring the lovable Wallace and Gromit. A Grand Day Out turned out to be the wellspring from which all blessings would flow as it created an entire franchise in its wake, producing additional shorts, spin-offs, and feature films, including the also much beloved Shaun the Sheep franchise.

Wallace is a home-based inventor who prefers his meals with a good bit of cheese. Gromit is his loyal beagle, and the two live together in a flat in Lancashire. While they’re good friends and often share each other’s company, Wallace occasionally gets himself in over his head with his many contraptions, as well as a series of double-dealing outsiders, leaving Gromit to try and dissuade Wallace from getting involved with them, but eventually having to save them both, more or less. Their various adventures involve a crafty museum-robbing penguin, an evil sheep-rustling dog (as well as the sheep), a murderous former bread advertisement model, a menagerie of pesky and invasive rabbits and a take-no-prisoners hunter, and a lonely, satellite-dwelling automaton.

In 1989’s A Grand Day Out, Wallace discovers that their home is completely bereft of cheese, and since they’re planning to go on holiday anyway, he builds a spaceship for them to visit the moon. After all, everyone knows that the moon is made of cheese! Once there, they come upon a coin-operated robot, one that dreams of skiing the snowy mountains of Earth. However, it becomes distracted when following Wallace and Gromit around as they picnic their way across the surface of the moon, eating cheese and crackers along the way before deciding to head home.

In 1993’s The Wrong Trousers, Wallace invents a pair of “techno-trousers,” which are a large set of automated walking pants, giving them to Gromit on his birthday to take him on walks. Wallace is also renting out a spare room to a mysterious penguin, who turns out to be the notorious criminal mastermind Feathers McGraw. After pushing Gromit out of the picture and replacing him as Wallace’s pet, Feathers secretly plans to use the Wallace and his techno-trousers to steal a precious diamond at the local museum. It’s now up to Gromit to stop McGraw and save Wallace from his greedy clutches.

In 1995’s A Close Shave, Wallace and Gromit start a window-washing business, but after a day in which they meet local wool shopkeeper Wendolene Ramsbottom and her large dog Preston, they come home to find a sheep loose in their kitchen. Using Wallace’s Knit-O-Matic machine, they clean him up and call him Shaun. Preston, however, steals the plans for the Knit-O-Matic, rustling sheep with the specific intent of re-building the machine and grounding them all up into dog food. Since Wallace has fallen in love with Wendolene, he and Gromit must come to the rescue, as does the plucky and adorable Shaun.

In 2005’s The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wallace and Gromit’s first feature film, they’ve opened a humane pest control business, Anti-Pesto, using Wallace’s latest inventions, the Bun-Vac 6,000 and the Mind Manipulation-O-Matic. The former sucks the little bunnies out of the dirt and the latter brainwashes them into not wanting to eat vegetables, which their latest client, Lady Tottington, is very impressed by. Unfortunately, this highly discourages avid hunter and romantic rival Lord Quartermaine. After an accident in which Wallace’s brain becomes intertwined with one of the rabbits, nicknamed Hutch, a giant bunny begins destroying various neighborhood gardens and eating all of the vegetables in the middle of the night. Quartermaine soon vows to kill the monster, leaving Gromit with having to clear he and Wallace’s good name, as well as Anti-Pesto, and trying to stop the monster.

In 2008’s A Matter of Loaf and Death, someone has murdered twelve local bakers, leaving Wallace, who now runs the bakery business Top Bun with Gromit, as the potential 13th victim. During a delivery, they rescue a woman and her poodle in distress, who turns out to be Piella Bakewell, a former commercial model and spokesperson for the Bake-O-Lite bread company. Wallace recognizes her and is immediately smitten, and Piella reciprocates, moving into Wallace and Gromit’s lives with potential marriage in mind. Unfortunately, Gromit discovers that Piella is the baker serial killer, and she has her sights set directly on Wallace, hoping to complete her “baker’s dozen.” Wallace is blind to all of this, so once again it’s up to Gromit to save the day.

Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Cracking Collection gathers all four shorts and the feature film together in a single package, along with Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions, a 2002 BBC TV series featuring a collection of very short subjects. All of the original short films have been remastered in 4K, having been previously included in the Wallace & Gromit: The Collection UK release. These masters all carry over to this release from Shout! Studios. Unlike the UK release, it offers a Blu-ray containing the same masters in HD, whereas the UK release features the old ones. They’re all presented in Standard Dynamic Range on a triple-layered BD-100 disc, while The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and a set of extras is included on a dual-layered BD-50.

All four shorts are presented on 4K Ultra HD together. A Grand Day Out and The Wrong Trousers are presented in 1.33:1, A Close Shave is presented in 1.66:1, and A Matter of Loaf and Death is presented in 1.78:1. Despite being sourced from new “4K remasters,” the quality of each presentation varies wildly from pretty good to “What were they thinking?” None of these appear to be from their original camera negatives, but possibly upscaled from their previous HD masters. Though I can neither confirm or deny that.

A Grand Day Out, despite the low tech nature of its source in comparison to what’s to come, fares the best in terms of how natural it appears. Everything is a little sharper with very nice detail, even featuring a bit of minor speckling. Grain is more pronounced than it is on the other shorts, as well, but it’s obviously had some light DNR applied to it in order to even it out a bit more. The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave don’t appear quite as natural, especially as grain has been more plainly stripped out of them. Nothing looks overtly waxy, but they definitely appear too clean for their own good. In all of these shorts, colors are nice and robust and shadows have plenty of depth.

By far the worst of the four is A Matter of Loaf and Death, and by worst I mean that it’s been upscaled using AI, and it definitely looks it. Detail in the image is just plain gone, including many textures of the animation. In all honesty, there’s no excuse for this. It’s the boldest in terms of color and contrast and benefits from the widescreen format, featuring panoramic shots of village roads, cityscapes, and countrysides. However, it’s a frustratingly unnatural-looking picture.

Disappointing also is the fact although The Curse of the Were-Rabbit has been included in this set, it’s Blu-ray only. It looks as good as the previous Blu-ray from Universal, with a very attractive bitrate and a picture that appears far more natural than its counterparts, but the lack of UHD treatment for such a popular title that debuted on Blu-ray in 2019 seems like a wasted opportunity.

It should be noted that the new remasters were carried out by the BBC. However, it’s unclear just how involved Aardman was in that process, especially in the approval stage. The overall lack of consistency and complete disregard for the quality of the picture in each short is kind of staggering. After all, this is the kind of thing you might see early on in the UHD life cycle, not deep this into its existence. There’s no room for this when films like The Nightmare Before Christmas, A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, and the entire LAIKA library can look spectacular on UHD. As such, these presentations, outside of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, are mostly inferior to their previous BD counterparts, which I’m sad to report.

The audio for the four shorts is presented in English 5.1 and 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit features an English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio only, and all offer optional subtitles in English SDH. All of the original shorts were completed at 25fps and converted to 24fps for non-PAL systems, which has been tricky in terms of audio. The audio as presented here has been newly-restored, meaning that it’s been pitch-corrected. On the other hand, certain additional and missing sound effects and music cues have not been addressed, the most infamous of which is the changing of Happy Birthday to Me to For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow in The Wrong Trousers when Gromit opens his birthday card. This was obviously before Happy Birthday to Me was declared to be a part of the public domain, but now that it has, it’s something that could easily have been fixed. Because of the pitch-correction, there’s also a noticeable reverb quality to the audio. Otherwise, all of the tracks are clean and clear with good response all around. Unfortunately, like the video, the audio needs more attention, as well.

A GRAND DAY OUT (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): A/B+/B-
THE WRONG TROUSERS (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): A/B/B-
A CLOSE SHAVE (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): A/B/B-
THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): A/A-/B+
A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): A-/C/B-

The 3-Disc 4K Ultra HD release of Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Cracking Collection is presented in Limited Edition suitcase-style packaging, with the UHD and 2 1080p Blu-ray discs housed in a fold-out digi-book. Also included is a set of character clings (stickers) and a 24-page booklet containing a table of contents, an introduction by Nick Park, the essay The World of Wallace & Gromit by Peter Debruge, recipes for various Wallace and Gromit-themed dishes, photos, blueprints, a list of each disc’s contents, and a set of production credits. This release is also limited to 5,000 units. The following shorts, features, and extras are included on each disc:

DISC ONES (UHD) & TWO (BD)

A Grand Day Out (UHD & HD w/SDR – 23:58)
- Audio Commentary with Nick Park

The Wrong Trousers (UHD & HD w/SDR – 30:14)
- Audio Commentary with Nick Park, Steve Box, and Bob Baker

A Close Shave (UHD & HD w/SDR – 31:20)
- Audio Commentary with Nick Park and Steve Box

A Matter of Loaf and Death (UHD & HD w/SDR – 30:14)
- Audio Commentary with Nick Park, David McCormick, and Bob Baker

DISC THREE (BD)

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (HD – 85:00)
Cracking Contraptions:
- Shopper 13 (Upscaled SD – 3:48)
- The Autochef (Upscaled SD – 1:52)
- A Christmas Cardomatic (Upscaled SD – 2:03)
- The Tellyscope (Upscaled SD – 2:08)
- The Snowmanotron (Upscaled SD – 2:07)
- The Bully Proof Vest (Upscaled SD – 1:59)
- The 525 Crackervac (Upscaled SD – 2:03)
- The Turbo Diner (Upscaled SD – 2:04)
- The Snoozatron (Upscaled SD – 2:26)
- The Soccamatic (Upscaled SD – 1:58)
Featurettes:
- Peter Lord & Nick Park Interview (HD – 4:13)
- The Amazing World of Wallace & Gromit (SD – 15:23)
- Inside The Wrong Trousers (SD – 24:19)
- The Digital Special Effects in A Close Shave: How They Did It... (SD – 5:04)
- The Making of A Matter of Loaf and Death: How They Donut (SD – 20:20)
- When Wallace Met Harvey (Upscaled SD – 5:07)
- Picture Gallery (Upscaled SD – 1:50)
- Invention Blueprints (Upscaled SD – :43)

Many of the previous extras from various DVD and Blu-ray releases of the four shorts have carried over, including all of the audio commentaries and featurettes. Cracking Contraptions was a 2002 series of shorts in which Wallace and Gromit try out a group of new inventions. Unfortunately, the newly-included chat between Peter Lord and Nick Park is far too brief and doesn’t get into enough detail, but the older extras that follow manage to cover a lot more ground. The Amazing World of Wallace & Gromit is a lovely overview of the history of the characters and their popularity around the world, but was made when only the three original shorts existed. Inside The Wrong Trousers goes into extreme detail about the characters and the making of the short, containing plenty of raw footage of Nick Park on set demonstrating his animation techniques. The featurette dedicated to A Close Shave is brief, but the one dedicated to A Matter of Loaf and Death is a bit more exhaustive. Unfortunately, these standard definition extras are poorly-encoded as audible clicks can be heard from time to time, and the audio for The Amazing World of Wallace & Gromit is very unbalanced, leaning mostly to the left. When Wallace Met Harvey showcases Aardman’s, as well as Wallace and Gromit’s, involvement with the British-based Harvey Nichols department store for an ad campaign. Last are two brief animated picture galleries.

While a lot of this is worth digging into, there’s an awful lot of material missing in action. The distribution rights to these films have passed back and forth between different companies over the years, so naturally, some stuff just hasn’t managed to tag along. The BBC Region 1 DVD release of The Incredible Adventures of Wallace & Gromit features an introduction by Nick Park; a set of BBC Christmas Interstitials; text biographies and the history of Aardman; storyboards and alternate behind-the-scenes featurettes for A Close Shave and The Wrong Trousers; early screen tests; and a set of Nick Park’s early short films. The 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD of Wallace & Gromit: The First Three Adventures also includes an additional early screen test for A Grand Day Out. The BBC Region-Free 4K Ultra HD release of Wallace & Gromit: The Collection includes a total of three scrapbook galleries instead of two, and the 2015 documentary A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman.

The biggest cut comes for Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which is otherwise bare bones. The Blu-ray release by Universal included a number of extras, but not all from the original 2-Disc Wal-Mart Exclusive DVD release. In all, there’s an audio commentary with director/writers Nick Park and Steve Box; a set of deleted scenes with optional commentary; the featurettes How Wallace & Gromit Went to Hollywood, Behind-the-Scenes of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, A Day in the Life at Aardman, How to Build a Bunny, Making of the Were-Rabbit, and Learn to Draw Gromit; the 1997 short film Stage Fright with optional commentary; four picture galleries; several interactive children’s games; and a selection of Gromit’s Favorite Scenes and “Gromit Cam” Easter Eggs.

There are also several other Wallace & Gromit related programs that haven’t appeared on disc, as of yet. Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention TV series, which acted more as a co-hosting gig that explored the world of real-life inventors, was also the final production in which Peter Sallis performed as Wallace. The Prom 20 episode of The BBC Proms, entitled Wallace & Gromit’s Musical Marvels, was popular enough that it turned into a small tour. The Jubilee Bunt-a-Thon short was created to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. Of course, it should go without saying that the latest Netflix film, Vengeance Most Fowl, is missing too, but being that it was produced before any of these 4K collections were released, it’s more forgivable.

In addition to all of that, there are still more materials out there to be seen, many of which can be viewed on the official Wallace & Gromit Youtube channel. In other words, Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Cracking Collection is far from both “Cracking” and “Complete.” Add to that the disappointing picture quality, a lack of High Dynamic Range, and a hefty price tag... it makes it difficult to recommend. Perhaps in a slimmer package closer to $30 would be better, but even then, a recommendation would come with some obvious caveats. As per usual, your mileage may vary. The presentations of these films are watchable, but they deserve far better treatment than this.

- Tim Salmons

(You can follow Tim on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd. And be sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel here.)