{"id":931666,"date":"2026-10-13T16:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T16:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/931666\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T16:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T16:26:11","slug":"larger-than-life-review-wallace-gromit-and-the-gang-say-cheeeese-for-hilarious-aardman-origin-story-art-and-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/931666\/","title":{"rendered":"Larger Than Life review \u2013 Wallace, Gromit and the gang say cheeeese for hilarious Aardman origin story | Art and design"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nothing is safe from the scourge of immersification. They\u2019ve turned Gustav Klimt and Vincent Van Gogh into vast, projection-mapped digital environments; they\u2019ve told the stories of the moon landings and the dinosaurs and David Bowie as floor-to-ceiling electronic spectacles; and now they\u2019ve come for Aardman<\/a>. For Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, our national treasures. Is nothing sacred?<\/p>\n

The latest immersive cinematic experience at Lightroom is a big, eye-popping celebration of Aardman Animations, the company behind the world\u2019s favourite claymation films and TV shows. It moves between documentary storytelling, behind-the-scenes insight and dazzling immersive renderings of all your wide-grinned, cheeky northern favourites.<\/p>\n

We get to hear about how Peter Lord and David Sproxton<\/a> met in suburban Surrey and started messing around with clay, before joining forces with Nick Park<\/a> and setting in motion a series of events that would take them from Woking to the stars. We get to hear about how they first made Morph out of a ball of clay, how the animators hilariously act out all the scenes to camera themselves before moving over to puppets, how they make the mouths form the \u201ceeee\u201d sound of the word cheese, all interspersed with Shaun the Sheep doing a barn-based talent show and clips from their biggest cinematic triumphs.<\/p>\n

\u2018When\u2019s the movie starting?\u2019 \u2026 a child reaches out to the screen at Lightroom. Photograph: Justin Sutcliffe\/LIghtroom KX<\/p>\n

And it makes a pretty convincing argument for why Aardman is so important, so beloved by so many people. Early on, it cuts to a clip from 1989\u2019s A Grand Day Out, the first Wallace & Gromit film. At this huge scale you see every lump and bump in the clay, every finger print and smudge. It looks so real, so human. Director Lucy Izzard says in a voiceover: \u201cI think people still crave imperfection,\u201d and you think yes, that\u2019s it, that\u2019s why Aardman matters. It\u2019s something incredibly human in an age when things feel so amazingly non-human so much of the time.<\/p>\n

Does that hand-made, imperfect, homely aesthetic rub up awkwardly against the technological wizardry of immersive cinema? Sure does. But the bigger issue is that this experience doesn\u2019t really know what it wants to be.<\/p>\n

It ends up as half-documentary, half-clip show, becoming sort of neither in the process, and a bit hard to follow too. It doesn\u2019t even take full advantage of Lightroom\u2019s capabilities. It could be bolder, more fun, it could play with the immersive format a bit more.<\/p>\n

One good use of the tech are the side screens, which make you feel like you are inside various environments: Shaun the Sheep\u2019s barn, Gromit\u2019s cardboard box as he spies on Feathers McGraw, behind the recording desk as actors do their vocal takes. But it\u2019s not quite enough.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some fun stuff here. It\u2019s great seeing Creature Comforts recreated in living rooms and gardens, it\u2019s nice to see all the concept art and storyboards come to life, it\u2019s pretty joyful watching the amazing video for Peter Gabriel\u2019s Sledgehammer<\/a> at such an enormous scale. It just lacks the crowd-pleasing immersive thrills of Lightroom\u2019s recent Prehistoric Planet: Discovering Dinosaurs.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s sort of a documentary.\u2019 Photograph: Justin Sutcliffe\/LIghtroom KX<\/p>\n

As a jaded, tired contemporary art critic, I may not be the target audience, so I brought along someone called Solomon. What are his qualifications? Well, he\u2019s four, and yesterday he went to the cinema to see the latest Shaun the Sheep movie<\/a>, so you could say he\u2019s something of a young cinephile. Also, his father (me) is a critic, so he is probably genetically predisposed to have opinions about this.<\/p>\n

Halfway through, I ask what he thinks. He says: \u201cWhen is the movie starting? This is just ads.\u201d He\u2019s right \u2013 the whole thing just feels like an advert for Aardman. \u201cWhen is the movie starting?\u201d he asks again, more impatient this time, almost pleading. \u201cThis is it,\u201d I say. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of a documentary.\u201d He stares at me, uncomprehending, and then yawns. Ouch, he really is a critic.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t really have enough for kids, and the storytelling isn\u2019t strong enough for adults. It\u2019s gimmick over narrative, as if they didn\u2019t ask: \u201cHow can we make an amazing immersive experience?\u201d but instead asked: \u201cHow can we tell our story in an immersive-ish way?\u201d And those are two different propositions.<\/p>\n

This show doesn\u2019t tarnish Aardman\u2019s stellar reputation, nor detract from all the amazing, quirky, quaint, funny work that they\u2019ve done, but it doesn\u2019t add a huge amount to it either. More of a rubber glove on the head than a crowning achievement.<\/p>\n

Larger Than Life is at Lightroom, London, from 14 October to 4 January<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nothing is safe from the scourge of immersification. They\u2019ve turned Gustav Klimt and Vincent Van Gogh into vast,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":931667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-931666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/931667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}