Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Leofwine_draca 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a 30 minute short which got absolutely everything right - I remember wearing out my old VHS tape of it - Nick Park originally made the characters back in the 1980s and their first outing was this 1989 short.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.

DAVID SIM Aardman Animation started as a small company founded by Peter Lord and David Sproxton in the mid-70s. They're speciality was the almost lost art of stop-motion animation, particularly with claymation figures. They enjoyed some success with the eye-popping Peter Gabriel music video Sledgehammer. But the company really found its feet when novice animator Nick Park joined the studio.It was Park who would put the company on the map, and introduce two of the most endearing animated characters the world would ever see, Wallace & Gromit. The Wallace & Gromit world is a most peculiar one. Wallace is a scatterbrained, cheese-obsessed inventor, always working on the next madcap invention. Gromit is his faithful dog, and much smarter than Wallace ever will be. With his incredibly expressive monobrow, he watches in silent dismay as Wallace's cock-ups get them into the wackiest adventures.Each one of the Wallace & Gromit shorts has been a delight. So far we've seen the likes of a skiing oven, robotic trousers, a cyber-dog, a cereal killer, and with they're feature film debut, a Were-Rabbit. The films manage a perfect blend of laugh-aloud comedy and smart visual invention. My mouth always waters at the prospect of the next adventure.And A Grand Day Out is where it all began. Wallace and Gromit are lounging they're Bank Holiday away, so Wallace wants to go somewhere exotic. With not a piece of cheese in the house, Wallace on an impulse decides to build a rocket ship and fly to the Moon (which is made of cheese, to Wallace's thinking). But when they get there, they instead have to contend with a ski-obsessed oven/cooker, who won't leave them in peace.Even in they're debut, Wallace & Gromit and A Grand Day Out is a charming adventure. All of the things we would come to expect about them are plain to see, albeit in a slightly rougher, uncut form. They're characterisations have already been established, with Peter Sallis nailing Wallace's dimwitted inflections. And Aardman's love of nutty contraptions is there too.The film comes with many delightful sight gags tucked around every corner. I especially liked the rocket ship's wallpapered interior, and the throwaway sight of a handbrake on the control panel. But the most inspired idea is a coin-operated oven lying neglected on the Moon. I've always been an enormous fan of silent comedy (why I like Gromit so much as a character). And Park and Aardman create an intriguing character with this oven.Wisely, they don't give it a voice of its own (perhaps the budget wouldn't stretch that far?). Instead, they just build a character out of incidental details and its all enacted in total silence: the cooker's daydreaming of skiing; writing out a parking ticket to Wallace's rocket; gluing the surface of the Moon back together; trying to hit Wallace with a truncheon only for the money to run out mid-swing, etc.Nick Park directs it all with such a light touch that the film breezes by. However, as much as I enjoyed the film it does have its flaws. A Grand Day Out is probably the weakest of the Wallace & Gromit shorts. The animation is a little rough around the edges, and lacks the pristine sleekness of the subsequent entries. It also falls down in the plot department. All of the other Wallace & Gromit films are driven by far stronger stories. This one is quite thin. For instance, we never learn how the cooker wound up on the Moon in the first place. (you'd swear it's one of Wallace's failed inventions). The plot, such as it is, is made to take a backseat to the (admittedly funny) visual puns and Wallace & Gromit's effortless double-act.Perhaps A Grand Day Out hasn't aged as well as the other films, but a lot of the things we've come to love about Wallace & Gromit are already in place. One area where it does have the edge is its the most conceptually ambitious. All the other films in the series have remained earthbound and A Grand Day Out is the only one so far to aim for something more profound. It touches upon themes rarely seen in animation today. If it had the budget accorded The Curse of the Were-Rabbit then perhaps A Grand Day Out may have become something extraordinary rather than just an engaging entertainment.To look at it in the harsh light of day, A Grand Day Out is the prototype. It was The Wrong Trousers that really set the style for the series, and struck up the balance between top quality writing, sidesplitting comedy and fabulous animation in all of the right places. Still, a highly promising debut nonetheless that rightfully converted an entire nation.

ajgrant1991 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!"

ian_harris Wallace and Gromit are a phenomenon. How many stop motion animation films win Oscars, top the US and UK box office charts etc. But all that came later.A Grand Day Out was the first Wallace and Gromit film. Low budget. More or less a graduation piece. Of course the animation is less sophisticated than in the later films. Of course the plot is a little shallow. The entire story is designed to minimise the need for sophisticated animation and to maximise the excuse for shortcomings (perhaps dogs and people would move a bit like that on a cheese moon).Yet it is extraordinary to see how much of the Aardman genius is already there in this short film. Hilarious and clever references to other films. Mice in shades for take off. The rocket handbrake gag. Coin-operated machine gags (brilliantly recycled in Were-Rabbit BTW). And a machine (is it an Aga?) that daydreams about skiing when it sees Wallace's holiday magazines.Of course TWT, ACS and Were-Rabbit are better movies, but this film is so worth seeing as a sign of early genius and indeed in its own right as a crude but wonderful animated film.