# The Wrong Trousers

The Wrong Trousers is a 1993 British stop-motion animated short film directed and co-written by Nick Park. It was produced by Aardman Animations in association with Wallace and Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol, Lionheart Television and BBC Children's International. It is the second film featuring the eccentric inventor Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) and his dog Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989). In the film, a villainous penguin, Feathers McGraw, uses a pair of robotic trousers to steal a diamond from the city museum.
The Wrong Trousers debuted in the UK on 26 December 1993 on BBC Two. Like the previous film, it received critical acclaim. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1994. It was followed by A Close Shave (1995), The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008) and Vengeance Most Fowl (2024).

## Plot

For his birthday, Wallace gives his dog, Gromit, a pair of robotic "Techno-trousers" to take him on walks. To pay his debts, Wallace lends a room to a penguin, who befriends Wallace and drives Gromit out of the house. The penguin takes an interest in the trousers, which can walk on walls and ceilings, and secretly rewires them for remote control. Gromit discovers that the penguin is Feathers McGraw, a criminal who disguises himself as a chicken by donning a red rubber glove on his head.
Feathers forces Wallace into the trousers, sends him through town to tire him out, then sends him to bed. Gromit spies on Feathers as he takes measurements of the city museum, and discovers his plans to steal a diamond. While Wallace sleeps, Feathers marches him to the museum in the trousers. He infiltrates the building and captures the diamond, but he triggers the alarm, waking Wallace up. Feathers marches him back to the house and traps him and Gromit in a wardrobe at gunpoint.
Gromit rewires the Techno-trousers to break open the wardrobe, and he and Wallace pursue Feathers aboard their model train set. Wallace disarms Feathers and frees himself from the trousers. After Feathers' train collides with the trousers, Gromit captures him in a milk bottle. Feathers is imprisoned in the city zoo in disgrace, and Wallace pays his debts with the reward money. Outside, the discarded Techno-trousers reactivate in the dustbin and walk off into the sunset.

## Production

Production began in 1990. Peter Sallis, who voiced Wallace, said The Wrong Trousers was based loosely on the 1964 film Topkapi, and said it was his favourite Wallace & Gromit film. David Sproxton, the co-founder of Aardman and the producer of the Wallace & Gromit films, said that The Wrong Trousers was "a whole league higher up the food chain in terms of production values and storytelling" compared to A Grand Day Out.
Whereas Park wrote most of A Grand Day Out, for The Wrong Trousers he worked with the Doctor Who writer Bob Baker. Baker took ideas from Park's sketchbooks, suggesting they make a drawing of a penguin the villain. Park wanted to include a chase on a model railway, feeling it would be funny to stage a Hollywood-style action sequence in a living room, so Baker suggested they make a heist film with the train as the denouement. Sproxton described it as film noir, likening the alley scenes to Alfred Hitchcock. Feeling that most stop-motion animation used bland lighting, the animators tried to light the sets as if they were making a live-action thriller. The animators could not review their footage until it was developed in a separate studio in London. The first cut was 38 minutes long.

## Reception

The Wrong Trousers was voted as the eighteenth-best British television show by the British Film Institute. The film has an approval rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 26 reviews, and an average score of 9.1/10. The critical consensus reads, "An endearing and meticulous showcase of stop motion animation, The Wrong Trousers also happens to be laugh-out-loud funny."
The film was awarded the Grand Prix at the Tampere Film Festival, and the Grand Prix at the World Festival of Animated film – Animafest Zagreb in 1994. The Wrong Trousers won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1994. In 2024, Michael Hogan in The Guardian's list of greatest Kid's TV villains ranked Feathers McGraw number one, writing, "The definitive screen villain of our age is a penguin with a red rubber glove on its head. The gun-toting, 3ft tall criminal mastermind first terrorised viewers in 1993 Oscar-winning short The Wrong Trousers. [...] The fact that he's mute with expressionless beady eyes only makes him more terrifying."
During a 2016 directors' roundtable interview conducted by The Hollywood Reporter, the American filmmaker David O. Russell cited the climactic train sequence as an influence on his direction of the action in Three Kings (1999). The British filmmaker Danny Boyle said it was one of the greatest action sequences.