Movie Review: Wallace and Gromit

Wallace and Gromit The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

Directed by Nick Park, Steve Box

Written by Steve Box, Nick Park, Mark Burton, Bob Baker

Starring Peter Sallis, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Peter Kay

Release Date October 7th, 2005

Published October 8th, 2005 

Recently Aardman studios, home to the famous stop motion animation duo Wallace and Gromit and their plasticine cousins from the 1999 hit  Chicken Run, burned to the ground. The building and everything inside was lost. On the bright side however W & G creator Nick Park, while out on a worldwide promotional tour for the pair's first feature length film Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of The Were-Rabbit, had with him one of the many clay models of Wallace and Gromit used in the movie.

This guarantees that Wallace and Gromit, despite the tragic loss of their home, will be back again. This is wonderful news considering that their feature debut is a wildly entertaining kiddie flick with a great heart and a nice lesson wrapped up in a technological marvel of filmmaking technique.

The tiny English village home to the beloved duo of Wallace and Gromit is abuzz over the big vegetable festival. When I say big vegetable festival I mean BIG vegetable festival. All of the villagers are engaged in growing the largest veggies ever seen for Lady Tottington (voiceed by Helena Bonham Carter) and her family's 518th annual vegetable festival.

Unfortunately, the town has a bit of a rabbit problem. The cute and fuzzy bunnies of the world have converged on the town and only Wallace and Gromit and their pest control service, the cleverly monikered Anti-Pesto, can protect the town's giant veggies by employing Wallace's latest invention, the Bun-Vac, a vacuum powered device that allows W & G to collect all of the rabbits in a way that does not harm them.

Lady Tottington, hosting the festival at her massive estate also has a rabbit problem that requires Anti-Pesto's attention. Wallace and Gromit show up to take care of it and Wallace is immediately smitten. Lady Tottington has another suitor in the scheming jerk Victor Quartermaine (voiced by Ralph Fiennes), a hunting enthusiast with a mean dog.

The plot kicks in with yet another new invention of Wallace's, a mind control device that he hopes will change the minds of the rabbits from veggie-lovers to cheeseheads. Things naturally go awry and soon a very large rabbit, still very much a veggie lover, is terrorizing the countryside threatening to cancel the big festival. Can Wallace and Gromit track down this giant rabbit and save the festival or will Victor Quartermaine and his big game hunting get him first?

This lovingly crafted tale of friendship, vegetables and PETA friendly animal control is wonderfully realized with a fillmmaking technology that is truly astonishing. In a five year process the animators manipulated the characters movements frame by frame. On a good day three seconds of usable footage was a major accomplishment.

Augmenting the process with CGI effects Wallace and Gromit and their terrific supporting cast inhabit a magically realistic environment. So wonderfully crafted are the characters and sets in Curse of The Were-Rabbit that even the fingerprints occasionally found on the Plasticine characters are charming.

In his Oscar winning Wallace and Gromit short features, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, director Nick Park developed a style of simple storytelling that is safe for kids without being condescending. Wallace and Gromit are lovable, fun characters that you want to watch and hope succeed in whatever adventure they take up.

The duo's feature debut is the perfect culmination of that simple style of storytelling combined with innovative technology and just plain hard work. Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of The Were-Rabbit is an extraordinary little film. The team at Aardman Studios is rivaled only by the computer magicians at Pixar in their combination of craftsmanship and storytelling.

For kids of all ages Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit ranks right up there with Finding Nemo, Shrek and Monsters Inc. as a modern animation classic. Not just for kids, however, because it is so well accomplished, so detailed and so wonderfully optimistic. When the Oscar for best animated feature is announced in March 2006, don't be surprised when Nick Park and co-director Steve Box make their way to the podium to collect yet another Oscar.