As a reward for surviving 2024, here’s a gift from the heavens for all of us: a new Wallace and Gromit movie called “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” with plot points involving turnips, Wellington boots, garden gnomes, a knitted onesie complete with tie and vest, and the return of a scheming villain named Feathers McGraw who’s actually a penguin disguised as a chicken. Need I say more?

Well, OK, I’ll say a little more, but don’t pretend you aren’t scurrying right over to Netflix without reading the rest of this. Wallace (voiced by Ben Whitehead, replacing the late Peter Sallis) is an eccentric inventor living in cozy comfort in the north of England with his best friend, his dog Gromit (voiced by no one, as Gromit is eloquently silent). This film marks the 35th year of their adventures, beginning with the short film “Wallace & Gromit: A Grand Day Out” in 1989, all of them rendered in lovingly detailed stop-motion animation. “Vengeance Most Fowl” is only the second feature-length film, following “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” in 2005. It’s a long wait between features, as it takes a long time to film in stop-motion; publicity documents for the film state that one stop-motion animator produces, on average, 4.2 seconds of footage per week.

But “Vengeance Most Fowl,” directed by franchise creator Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham, is most certainly worth the wait: It is, like every Wallace and Gromit outing, a rollicking adventure involving breathless chases (well, one involving two river barges is a fairly sedate chase), elaborate inventions and delightful sprinkles of wit. (I don’t know why it’s so funny that Gromit reads Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” in bed, but it just is.) The plot here is that Feathers, who years ago was nabbed by Wallace in an act of robbery, has long plotted revenge from his lonely incarceration in a zoo. With help from an army of automated gnomes created by Wallace only to turn against him (Gromit, of course, disapproved of them from the beginning), Feathers soon has the upper hand, or wing, or whatever it is that claymation-penguins-disguised-as-chickens have. But, of course, our heroes figure out how to save the day.

The movie’s a playful commentary on overdependence on technology — Wallace has machines that bathe him, dress him and make his tea — but it’s also just fast-paced fun, and you look forward to watching it a second time to catch the sight gags you missed. (I quite liked a TV reporter named Onya Doorstop, a brief sight of a wanted poster for a criminal known as Pesky Myrtle and a sign in the gnome factory reading “Pointy Hats Must Be Worn At All Times.”) It’s pure pleasure, all the more so for its laboriously low-tech artistry that hasn’t changed much over 35 years. As Wallace reminds us, late in the film, “there are some things a machine just can’t do.” Thank goodness.

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'WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL'

3.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG (for some action and rude humor)

Running time: 1:19

How to watch: On Netflix Jan. 3

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