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A Close Shave

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This article is about the animated film. For the band, see Close Shave. For the saying, see close call.

A Close Shave
US edition VHS cover art
Directed byNick Park
Written by
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyDave Alex Riddett
Edited byHelen Garrard
Music byJulian Nott
Production
companies
Distributed byBBC Worldwide
Release date
  • 24 December 1995 (1995-12-24)
Running time
30 minutes[1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
Budget£1.3 million[2]

A Close Shave is a 1995 British stop-motion animated short film co-written and directed by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations with Wallace & Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol and BBC Children's International. It is the third film featuring Wallace & Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989) and The Wrong Trousers (1993). A Close Shave won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.[3] A Close Shave saw the first appearance of Shaun, who became the main character of the Shaun the Sheep spin-off series.

Plot

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Wallace and his dog Gromit, operate a window cleaning business. Wallace falls for the wool shopkeeper Wendolene Ramsbottom. Her sinister dog, Preston, rustles sheep to supply the shop. After a lamb escapes and wanders into their house, Wallace places him in his Knit-o-Matic, which washes and shears sheep and knits the wool into jumpers. Wallace names the lamb Shaun. Preston steals the Knit-o-Matic blueprints.

When Gromit investigates, while Wallace is distracted with Wendolene, Preston captures him and frames him for the sheep rustling. Gromit is arrested and imprisoned, while Wallace's house is inundated with escaped sheep. Wendolene breaks up with him to protect him. Wallace and the sheep break Gromit out of jail and hide out in the fields. Wendolene and Preston arrive in a lorry and round up the sheep. When Wendolene demands Preston stop the rustling, he locks her in the lorry with the sheep and drives away, intent on turning them into dog meat.

Wallace and Gromit give chase on their motorcycle. When Gromit's sidecar detaches, he activates its aeroplane mode and resumes the chase from the air. Wallace gets trapped in the lorry too and he, Wendolene, and the sheep are transported to Preston's factory, where Preston has built his own Knit-o-Matic. The captives are loaded into the wash basin, but Shaun escapes. Shaun activates neon signs to reveal the factory's location to Gromit, who attacks Preston with a porridge gun. Shaun sucks Preston into the Knit-o-Matic, removing his fur and revealing him to be a robot. Wendolene explains that Preston is a creation of her inventor father and has gone wrong. The Knit-o-Matic makes a sweater of Preston's fur and dumps it on his head, obscuring his vision. Shaun knocks Preston into the dog food mincing machine, crushing him.

Gromit is exonerated and Wallace rebuilds Preston as a harmless remote-controlled dog. Afterwards, Wallace is saddened when Wendolene reveals she is allergic to cheese, meaning they can only be friends. When he tries to cheer himself up with some cheese, he finds that Shaun has eaten it all.

Cast

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Reception

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On Rotten Tomatoes, A Close Shave has a perfect score of 100% based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10.[4]

References

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  1. ^ "A Close Shave". BBFC.
  2. ^ "Production History – A Close Shave". Telepathy. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  3. ^ "The 68th Academy Awards (1996) Nominees and Winners". The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 25 March 1996. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  4. ^ "A Close Shave". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on 28 February 2015. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
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