A Matter of Loaf and Death
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A Matter of Loaf and Death is a 2008 British stop-motion animated short film produced by Aardman Animations, created by Nick Park, and is the fourth short to star his characters Wallace and Gromit, A Matter of Loaf and Death is a murder mystery, with Wallace and Gromit starting a new bakery business. With an unknown assailant murdering bakers, Gromit tries to solve the case before Wallace ends up a victim himself.
Plot
A serial killer has murdered twelve bakers. While on a delivery for their bakery business, Wallace and Gromit save Piella Bakewell, a former pin-up girl for the Bake-O-Lite bread company, and her nervous poodle Fluffles when the brakes on her bicycle fail. Gromit finds there is no problem with the brakes, but Wallace is smitten. He and Piella begin a whirlwind romance, and Gromit is angered when she redecorates their house. Fluffles and Gromit share a sensitive moment when she returns Gromit's possessions, discarded by Piella.
Wallace sends Gromit to return Piella's forgotten purse. At Piella's mansion, Gromit discovers numbered mannequins representing each of the murdered bakers, and a book of photos; Wallace is her planned thirteenth victim, completing a baker's dozen. When he shows Wallace the evidence, Wallace is too distracted with his engagement to Piella to listen.
Gromit installs security measures in their home, including a metal-detecting security screener. After Piella tricks Wallace into thinking that Gromit bit her (she bit her own arm), Wallace muzzles Gromit and chains him up. Gromit watches helplessly as Piella prepares to push Wallace to his death, but he is saved when Piella is struck by a bag of flour. After an angry outburst about bakers, she leaves but drops by the next day to apologize with a cake. Gromit, suspicious, follows her home, where Piella throws him into a storeroom with Fluffles.
Escaping in Piella's old Bake-O-Lite hot air balloon, Gromit and Fluffles arrive at Wallace's house as he lights the candle. After a struggle, the cake falls, revealing a bomb. Wallace and Gromit are attacked by Piella, who reveals she detests bakers after her weight gain ended her career as the Bake-O-Lite girl. She is about to kill Wallace, but is attacked by Fluffles in a forklift. In the chaos, the bomb ends up in Wallace's trousers; Gromit and Fluffles neutralize the explosion by filling the trousers with dough while Piella leaps onto her balloon and escapes. However, her weight drags the balloon into a crocodile enclosure in the zoo where she is devoured.
Dejected, Wallace and Gromit decide to take their mind off things with a delivery. Outside, they find Fluffles and she joins them.
Cast
- Peter Sallis as Wallace
- Sally Lindsay as Piella Bakewell
- Melissa Collier as Fluffles
- Sarah Laborde as Bake-O-Lite singer
- Ben Whitehead as Baker Bob
- Geraldine McEwan as Miss Thripp
