Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Wallace and Gromit the stars of a number of Oscar winning shorts are back for a feature length adventure in Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The duo proves naysayers wrong as the cheese loving inventor and his silent dog easily carry a full length film. The characters and the story are amply rewarding and clock in at a brisk 85 pleasurable minutes. Steve Box and Nick Park wrote and directed this delightfully funny and endearing film.


The film is done entirely in claymation, much like the creator’s previous venture Chicken Run. Just like Chicken Run the film is peppered with classic cinema references and subtle jokes that will amuse adults but will probably be missed by children. For instance the local food store is called Harvey’s and one of the characters names is PC Mackintosh. In this age of CGI animation it is nice to see that there is still a place for the artistry that is part of traditional filmmaking. The success of this film just shows that people are more interested in a film with endearing characters and a well developed plot than in the latest whiz bang cinematic gadgetry. The process of creating a claymation film includes tedious hours of setting up maquette shots, changing subtle facial expressions, and snapping still images at 24 frames per second while making small movements of limbs and replacing facial features like eyes, lips, and eyebrows. If you look closely you can even see fingerprints in the sculpted clay that makes up the characters on film. Rather than make them artificial it gives them a warm organic feeling that translates into greater emotional attachment to the characters.


Peter Sallis voices the scatterbrained inventor Wallace. His indomitable sidekick Gromit of course has no voice. There are a number of other notable British actors lending their voices to the film. Ralph Fiennes voices the overzealous and unscrupulous hunter Victor Quartermaine and Helena Bonham Carter, straying from her work with Tim Burton, voices the heroine Lady Tottington. Not that the film needs to be carried by a number of star voice-over turns. The Wallace and Gromit shorts had considerable success without noticeable star power. Here the characters are so well fleshed out in features and in the story that the resumes of the actors voicing them are inconsequential.


The Curse of the Were-Rabbit features Wallace and Gromit as crack humane bunny busters in a small town entirely fixated on their gardens. The town’s prize vegetables are being ravaged by the mysterious Were-Rabbit before the giant vegetable contest. It is up to the silly inventor and his stoic dog to save the vegetables and capture the villainous creature. The residents of the town have names such as Mulch and Blight and seem to have worlds that revolve entirely around their gardens of giant fruits and vegetables. One can’t imagine how anything gets done around town. Wallace and his devoted dog must capture the Were-Rabbit before the vegetable competition to redeem their garden protection business and to impress the lovely Lady Tottington. She in turn has an evil suitor in Victor Quartermaine who is determined to kill the Were-Rabbit at any cost. And Quartermaine too has a dog, an evil little beady eye dog with a menacing leer.


The vegetable contest and the two divergent attempts to end the Were-Rabbit’s terrorist snacking lead to a wonderful climax that, as improbable as it sounds, has a magnificent aerial dogfight between two, well, dogs. The scene evinces everything from King Kong to wartime fighter footage to The Wolf Man. In doing so the film offers enticements to viewers of all ages.


Wallace and Gromit is a truly enjoyable film well worth the exorbitant price of admission. It substitutes story and substance for the flash of CGI animation and provides warm and rich characters that are missing from many of the monstrosities that pass for animated entertainment these days. It reminds the audience that great filmmaking takes time and patience to develop just the right characters in just the right adventure and to place them just so in shot after shot after shot. Careful filmmaking for children as well as adults is a subtlety and an art too often passed over these days when a character can wander through a digitally rendered world with the click of a mouse.