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Film review

Wallace & Gromit: handmade laughs

The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a product of ingenious minds and hard work, and we get to sit back and enjoy it.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published October 6, 2005

[DreamWorks]

Wallace reaches for Hutch the rabbit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a spoof of horror movies that’s delightful, not frightful.

	Gromit
	LET’S CHAT Check out Times film critic Steve Persall’s blog.

Before Woody and Buzz, Shrek and Donkey or any pair of Incredibles, there was the team of Wallace and Gromit, a simple Englishman and his complicated dog. More than 25 years after their debut in Nick Park's Oscar-winning short, A Grand Day Out, Wallace & Gromit finally have their own full-length movie.

The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a start-to-finish delight, a silly horror movie spoof, as the title suggests, and as perfectly conceived as Park's fans expect. Seeing the earlier Wallace & Gromit short films isn't necessary for newcomers; renting or buying them later will be a temptation.

Park's Aardman Animations studio specializes in stop-motion animation similar to that used in his first feature, Chicken Run, and in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. Movements of hilariously designed Plasticine models are shaped one twitch or blink at a time and individually filmed. Miniature sets and props are manually detailed down to the last leaf and brick. This is as hands-on as modern animation gets at a time when computers do most of the heavy lifting for other animation studios. The personal touch makes the results even more marvelous.

In this adventure, Wallace & Gromit operate a humane pest control service named Anti-Pesto, an example of the genial puns Park, co-creator Steve Box and two co-writers sprinkle throughout the dialogue and backgrounds. Wallace's gift for invention hasn't deserted him; wakeup time is a Rube Goldberg-style routine, and his Bun-Vac 6000 is a handy tool for suctioning rabbits from holes dug in clients' gardens armed with sentry gnomes.

Pulling the switches on these contraptions is Gromit, a dog of undetermined pedigree and thoroughbred determination. He doesn't talk like so many animated animals do, but Gromit's facial expressions, his resiliency in crises, are funny beyond words. Comparisons to Keaton and Chaplin have been made countless times over 25 years, so I'll just agree.

Anti-Pesto is busy these days, with the annual Giant Vegetable Competition only days away. Nearly everyone has a pumpkin, eggplant or melon they're protecting from hungry bunnies. Wallace & Gromit safely extract the rabbits and take them home as pets; in the final credits a funny bunny bops into the usual "no animals were harmed" disclaimer.

As usual, Wallace has an idea: Perhaps he can use his Mind-O-Matic device to brainwash rabbits into not eating vegetables. He hooks up his mind with one of the pets. Any resemblance to The Fly is purely intentional. So are the nods to American Werewolf in London and King Kong when the situation spirals out of control.

There's a sweet, hesitant romance developing between Wallace and Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter), who oversees the vegetable contest underneath a cumulus cloud hairdo. At least her hair stays on, which is better than Victor Quartermaine (who knew Ralph Fiennes is funny?), whose toupee in the Bun-Vac 6000 makes Wallace a target for revenge.

Park could have parlayed Wallace & Gromit into a feature film years ago, after two Academy Awards (and another for the unrelated Creature Comforts) and a fourth nomination. We're fortunate that he waited, since The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Corpse Bride come along at a time when animation is getting too easy and the extra energy isn't channeled anywhere else except maybe promotions.

Innovation does matter, but so does elbow grease and the devotion necessary to keep it flowing. Park, Box and Burton tried harder and delivered more than the mouse pad perfection of Robots and Madagascar. Maybe they knew their movies wouldn't look as pristine, so they compensated with pure imagination. That's a premium in studio animation these days.

Grade: A

Directors: Nick Park, Steve Box

Cast: Voices of Peter Sallis, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Smith

Screenplay: Bob Baker, Steve Box, Mark Burton, Nick Park

Rating: G; mild suggestive humor

Running time: 85 min.

[Last modified October 5, 2005, 10:24:08]