Review: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit

A lot of people still consider animation kids stuff, and cannot see beyond the ink and paint, pixels and bits and the models and clay (Muppet-haters are much the same way.) This is the reason that too many wily 10-year-olds are able to convince their unwary parents that something like the epic tentacle-rape anime series Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend is a suitable video rental. Helping dispel the unfortunate falsehood that all animation is designed to sell toys while assuring that old stop-motion animation masters Ray Harryhausen and George Pal do not become mere footnotes in this century of CGI is three-time Oscar winner Nick Park, with his hilarious feature-length Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.


This relentless clay-animated comedy (the term "Claymation" is the copyrighted invention of California Raisins animator Will Vinton) is fast-paced, lovingly presented and features the voice talents of Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter (of Tim Burton's dark and similar Corpse Bride). Fiennes plays Victor Quartermaine, a vainglorious cad bent on winning the affections of Lady Campanula Tottington (Carter), whom cheese-loving simpleton Wallace (Peter Sallis) is sweet on. Fiennes is a perfect riot as the preening macho dork, and Carter over-annunciates to a T to overcome the slightly-snotty Totty's giant teeth. The 84-year-old Sallis, who has voiced Wallace since the first Wallace & Gromit short A Grand Day Out in 1989, makes Wallace lovable, despite the fact that the character is more of an idiot than Napoleon Dynamite.

In the same way that the Michael Caine/Ben Kingsley comedy Without A Clue made Watson the brains behind a witless Sherlock Holmes, so too is the silent pooch Gromit constantly rescuing his dangerously doltish owner Wallace from trouble. The pair are inventors whose contraptions would make Rube Goldberg proud, and they find themselves in a big pickle when the home gardeners whose green wares they surveil (under the DBA Anti-Pesto) are besieged by a monstrous lepine known as "The Were-Rabbit". Of course, the beast, like Frankenstein's Monster or the rabbit-loving Lenny in Of Mice and Men, is misunderstood. Panic, mindless persecution and zaniness ensue.

The movie, co-directed by Park's Aardman Animations Ltd. cohort Steve Box, is a fantastic tribute to the horror films of old when the terror was implied and not shown. Because stop-motion is so time-consuming, there is plenty of time to set moods and convey feelings (which Gromit does so well without speaking). There are also clever riffs on Batman and a great dogfight scene right out of King Kong. This parodying of the classics works and will continue to work because it is not calling up current trends and pop culture for laughs, something that will ultimately taint otherwise evergreen smashes like Aladdin and Shrek.

It took Park and Box the 5 years since 2000's so-so Chicken Run to produce this (24 individual frames = 1 second on-screen), and such work and attention really shows, from the detailed rendering of characters to the ornate set pieces. As cheap-looking as some may claim clay animation to be, it lends dimension and a certain surreal warmth that CGI, with all its dead-eyed characters, cannot. It is a far cry from the comparatively primitive early Wallace & Gromit, though with a budget of $40 million, there should be no excuse for sloppiness or a script that doesn't pop. The one part where Aardman obviously employed the aid of a computer -- the brilliant Bun-Vac 6000 segment -- is forgivable, as there seemed to be no way to achieve the effect of cute and fuzzy bunnies floating untethered in the air. A very nice touch is how they actually rendered these CGI bunnies with artificial thumbprints in their digital plasticine skins.

Though the film is G-rated, there is one particular one-two gag that alludes to oral sex that would earn the film a hard-R if movies were rated for innuendo. The beauty of innuendo, though, is either you get it or you don't (like the Muppets, or Monty Python) -- there are no shades of grey. Still, Park's little masterpiece is the kind of movie that you can take the whole family to - twice, even (and if you go to a sold-out show opening weekend, you'll need to see it twice to catch the bits you missed through the laughter).

Anyone who hasn't seen the Wallace & Gromit shorts that started it all should check out Fox's DVD, The First Three Adventures which contains A Grand Day Out (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995). Park's 1989 Oscar winner Creature Comforts is available again with the first 13 episodes of the 2003 series inspired by it.