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.

Gromit discovers the penguin is Feathers McGraw, a criminal who disguises himself as a chicken by donning a red rubber glove on his head.

Gromit rewires the trousers to break open the wardrobe, and he and Wallace pursue Feathers aboard their model train set.

[4] 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.

[5] 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.

The critical consensus reads, "An endearing and meticulous showcase of stop motion animation, The Wrong Trousers also happens to be laugh-out-loud funny.

"[8] 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).