Review: Larger Than Life Starring Wallace & Gromit, Shaun and More at Lightroom
This cracking immersive projection experience showcases some of the UK's most iconic animations on a grand scale.
Photo: Justin Sutcliffe
Larger Than Life: Starring Wallace & Gromit, Shaun and More is the latest immersive projection show to debut at Lightroom's flagship venue in King's Cross and traces the history of Aardman, the UK's most decorated animation studio, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. The fifty-minute-long show, which is made up of archive interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and bespoke stop-motion sequences, is projected onto the 11-metre-high walls and floor of Lightroom's cavernous venue and offers visitors a peek behind the curtain at how Aardman's work is created, one frame at a time.
Photo: Justin Sutcliffe
As with every major production at Lightroom, Larger Than Life is a looping presentation. Visitors are free to move around the space throughout to take in the show from different vantage points and arrive and leave at any time. They're also welcome to stay for multiple loops of the presentation, which is advisable given the sheer amount of animated goodness on screen.
The show is broken up into eight chapters, exploring everything from the creation of the company and early forays into stop-motion animation through to a behind-the-scenes breakdown of how an army of illustrators, carpenters, mould-makers and animators all work in tandem on their feature-length projects. As with Lightroom's last immersive production, David Bowie: You're Not Alone, Larger Than Life is narrated entirely by archival interviews, with the likes of co-founders Peter Lord, David Sproxton and Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park sharing first-hand accounts of the company's history and creative process.
Photo: Justin Sutcliffe
After a kaleidoscopic overture at the top of the film (if such a thing exists when it loops) featuring all of Aardman's best-known characters, audiences get a brief overview of how the painstaking process of creating stop-motion animation works, alongside an acknowledgement of the form's early pioneers - Georges Méliès, Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen.
The clock winds back to the early 1970s, when Lord and Sproxton, and Park, then unknown to one another, began experimenting with the filmmaking technique they would later help redefine. For Lord and Sproxton, early success came through their work with the BBC on Vision On. For Park, it was crude 8mm films made at his Preston family home before he began work on A Grand Day Out while studying at the National Film and Television School.
From here, Larger Than Life works through the company's body of work at pace, covering everything from Morph and Creature Comforts to The Pirates and Robin Robin. Along the way, it briefly detours to showcase some of Aardman's commercial work and the much-loved music video for Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer', but the focus remains on its biggest hits - Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run and Shaun the Sheep - for most of the film's duration.
Photo: Justin Sutcliffe
Some of the most captivating sections of Larger Than Life dissect the filmmaking process behind creating Aardman's work, with time devoted to explaining how each film is written and storyboarded, and the voices are recorded before a frame of animation is committed to film. By way of demonstration, the train chase sequence from The Wrong Trousers is broken down shot by shot, with the original sketches for each displayed on Lightroom's mammoth walls before the accompanying animated shot plays in quick succession.
There's also a fascinating chapter that explains how modern-day Aardman can produce films at scale in Bristol, with multiple units working independently on different scenes under the same roof, referencing live-action video of employees acting out every shot to nail down the expressions, timings, and compositions of each shot.
Photo: Justin Sutcliffe
Interspersed with these documentary-like chapters are numerous excerpts from Aardman's work, scaled up to cover the entirety of Lightroom's main projection wall and left to play uninterrupted. To make full use of the venue's staggering size, the accompanying walls feature newly created, subtle animations that mirror the main film's content.
During a clip from Chicken Run's opening scene, the light from Mr Tweedy's torch scans every corner of the room; Gromit's attempt to hide from Feathers McGraw inside a dog food box sees cardboard cover the rest of the space, and Wallace's time on the moon in A Grand Day Out features a vast, cheese-covered vista.
The presentation also features newly created stop-motion sequences made especially for Lightroom, starring Morph, Shaun the Sheep and Wallace and Gromit. Given his commercial success, Shaun the Sheep receives the lion's share of attention, with multiple 'Baa-rns Got Talent' sequences showing Shaun and friends performing various feats of acrobatics, but all of these moments are just as delightful as their long-form pieces and make great use of Lightroom's towering 11-metre-high walls.
Photo: Justin Sutcliffe
While it's a joy to watch Aardman's work be projected onto the venue's giant screens and see the craftsmanship that went into creating it, the ground covered by Larger Than Life will be familiar to anyone who saw the 2015 retrospective, A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman, with both films drawing from a lot of the same archive material and interviews.
Thankfully, the visual flair on display throughout more than makes up for this reliance on previously seen footage, with the chapters covering the company's creation receiving a drastic glow-up that takes full advantage of Lightroom's visual real estate. There are also some gorgeous scenes depicting Aardman's characters - not least the animals of Creature Comforts, who share the screen across room-wide environments, and Wallace and Gromit, who are seen inhabiting the various rooms of 62 West Wallaby Street through a cross-section of the house.
Photo: Justin Sutcliffe
For those who have grown up with Aardman's work, Larger Than Life delivers a hugely engaging nostalgia trip that shines a spotlight on the countless hours given over to crafting some of the UK's most iconic animated films. Despite its familiar archive material, the show's all-encompassing presentation makes even the most recognisable moments from Aardman's body of work feel fresh, immersive and alive. As Wallace would say, they've done a cracking job.
★★★★
[Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review]
Larger Than Life runs at Lightroom in King's Cross until 4th January 2027. Tickets are priced from £25 for adults and £15 for children and students. For more information and to book tickets, visit lightroom.uk
