The Wrong Trousers (Nick Park, 1993)

The Wrong Trousers (Nick Park, 1993) follows the iconic clay stop-motion characters, Wallace and Gromit, in a 28 minute short film where Wallace invests in some self-walking trousers and Gromit is tormented by his new roommate, Penguin.

The film uses pre-existing characters, so does not need to take time here to set them or the time and place up, as the audience is already familiar with their relationship, situation and personality’s. The plot conflict is set up within the first 10 minutes, as the trousers, an important plot device, and the penguin, who establishes the main conflict, are introduced. However the film spends almost 5 minutes introducing the characters and showing us their daily morning routine, which is important as this provides the contrast to what their life, or Gromit’s in particular, is like after the penguin asserts himself.

The main escalation of events also occurs very early, at around 12 minutes into the film when Gromit moves out and Wallace is kidnapped by his own trousers. Since the film is so short, the exposition, conflict, climax and falling action all take place very quickly, with little space between them. Most of the other short films that we have watched have not had such a linear narrative, as they take place over a very short or un-specified period of time, and so they do not even have expositions at the start, such as Connect (Samuel Abrahams, 2010), or do not have rising action as most of the film is spent establishing character rather than comedy or plot, like Stutterer (Benjamin Cleary, 2015). The last 16 minutes involve Gromit trying to catch the penguin and Wallace being made to steal a diamond. Much of this time is spent in silence, as neither animal character speaks at all, so the film relies on dramatic music and animated body expressions to convey information to the audience. The film is also comedic, and most music, situations and jokes serve to make the audience laugh. The plot does come to a climax in the last 5 minutes, where a dramatic and intense chase scene plays out, using physical slapstick comedy that it’s made possible through the animation style to achieve comedy.

I remember in particular the moment where Gromit is looking out of a cardboard box, and a POV shot lets us see from his perspective that the penguin has noticed him, and a dramatic note in the non-diegetic composed score raises the tension of the moment. The penguin eventually moves on, and we see from outside the box that he did so because the box has a dog face drawn onto it, and Gromit’s eyes are essentially camouflaged onto it. This information is hidden from the audience at first to raise tension and keep us focused on what Gromit is seeing, immersing us in his position, but when it is revealed it makes a joke.