Nick Park's first two Wallace and Gromit films, A Grand Day Out (1989) and The Wrong Trousers (1993), have been rereleased in cinemas, and this Guardian review hails both as excellent family entertainment, awarding each a full five stars. The critic celebrates the stop-motion classics as "jewels" of animated comedy, each introduced by Julian Nott's distinctive brass-band march theme.

A Grand Day Out is described as a terrifically funny sci-fi adventure in which cheese-loving inventor Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) and his dog Gromit build a rocket in their cellar and fly to the moon, encountering a robot inhabitant likened to R2D2 and a possible influence on Pixar's Wall-E. The half-hour-long The Wrong Trousers is characterised as a more developed heist thriller that pushed Park into the big league, featuring remote-controlled "techno trousers" and the sinister penguin criminal Feathers McGraw, who manipulates Wallace into stealing a museum diamond. The review notes that the film's feature potential and the emotional strain between Wallace and Gromit were later drawn out in the 2024 sequel Vengeance Most Fowl.