The first thing that grabs you about Aardman Animation’s new immersive documentary Larger than Life is that yes, it is larger than life. All your Aardman faves – Wallace, Gromit, Shaun, various chickens – are blown up to a gargantuan scale on the Lightroom's walls. To an adult Aardman lover, it looks amazing. And the sprinkling of pre-schoolers in the house when I saw it were clearly having a whale of a time, joyously booping into their claymation faves.
Larger than Life is a triumph visually and no more so than in its opening moments: it's delightful when the walls transform into row upon row of the extremely recognisable eyes of dozens of your Aardman faves, staring at us through peepholes (a la the cardboard box Gromit hides in during The Wrong Trousers); it’s sublime when we get a full blown song-and-dance sequence featuring everyone from Morph to the Creature Comforts gang.
It is of course delightful: it’s Aardman.
The problems with Larger than Life as a complete film are twofold. On the one hand, there isn’t that much original claymation, and most of it is confined to the beginning. This is perfectly understandable as it famously takes Aardman years to make their films. But it does mean it peaks early. On the other it can feel a bit diffuse: more often than not it’ll be trying to explain some point about the studio’s history and the walls will be covered in loads of little frames, each with something different going on in it, a disembodied voice from a member of Team Aardman will gently drone away, and some dreamy background music tinkles behind it all. It feels diffuse and ambient and falls victim to a certain default Lightroom setting that’s partly due to the films being looped (so there’s a reluctance to offer a strong narrative structure), partly due to feeling every inch of wall has to be covered in detail when maybe it would have worked keeping it simpler.
It is of course delightful: it’s Aardman. But it’s neither essential must-see new material for lovers of the studio or a really insightful doc, but rather 50 minutes of really lovely vibes.
