Movie Review: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Directed by Steve Box and Nick Park.

Distributed by DreamWorks Distribution.

The stop-motion claymation creations of Nick Park have an unmistakable humanity. Even if you don’t know them by name, you’ll likely recognize his past characters upon sight: the despondent zoo captives in his Oscar-winning 1989 short, “Creature Comforts,” the Great Escaping cluckers of “Chicken Run,” and the beloved man-and-best-friend duo Wallace and Gromit.

Each is delicately shaped and crafted by human hands, the thumbprints of the animators often still fresh on the figures. They sit in direct contrast to the overslick sheen of the too-cool-for-grade-schoolers output of the Pixar and Blue Sky studios currently robbing piggy banks across the country.

The latest work to sprout from Park’s fertile mind is “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” the first full-length feature starring the titular team. Their initial appearances in a series of celebrated short films in the ’90s have amassed a fan base that adores their wry, unmistakably British humor. The formula is straightforward but enchanting. Wallace is the bald, big-grinned inventor with a different job in every film but two constant passions: wacky, necessarily unnecessary contraptions and a good hunk of cheese. Gromit is his resourceful mutt, who becomes a mute Watson to Wallace’s Sherlock Holmes whenever a mystery arises.

The mystery in this particular film (though not one for long to any moderately perceptive viewer) is the identity of a monstrous beast that’s tearing through the town’s vegetable patches. This is much more problematic than it sounds; the local vegetable competition is coming up and every resident has poured their blood, sweat, and tears (and in the local vicar’s case, holy water) into their colossal produce. The townspeople turn to Wallace and Gromit, now head of the pest-control company Anti-Pesto, for the solution.

Complicating matters is Victor Quartermaine (voiced by Ralph Fiennes), an effete Elmer Fudd-type, whose predilection for applying firearms to rabbits presents a sadistic alternative to the humane methods of Anti-Pesto. Quartermaine also presents Wallace with an altogether unexpected challenge: for the affections of town aristocrat Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter).

It’s a characteristically simple plot for the duo, which allows the feverish imagination of Park to charge through every minute detail of the movie’s design. The results are almost always devilishly clever. The walls of Wallace’s house are covered with portraits of their customers, whose eyes light up when their alarms are tripped by scavenging vermin (you can guess what happens when, one night, the Were-Rabbit tramples through every garden in town). Every item in Lady Tottington’s wardrobe intricately recreates a different piece of greenery. CGI, to the limited extent that it’s utilized, blends seamlessly with the handcrafted care of the figures, as in a particularly endearing scene where rabbits are sucked from their holes into a container and are shown floating about like astronauts.

But where the film’s creativity runs rampant, the plotting’s a little too timid for its own good. After raising the stakes with their last outing, “A Close Shave,” wherein the lives of the protagonists seem to be in genuine peril, the two reside in safer territory in “Were-Rabbit.” This time, anything that’s in mortal danger can generally be found at a salad bar.

Similarly frustrating is the resolution of romantic tension in “Shave” vs. “Were-Rabbit.” In the former, the mutual attraction between Wallace and his lady-friend is bittersweetly cleft when she reveals her aversion to cheese, evoking the unresolved disquiet that eloquently capped the second season of BBC’s “The Office.” “Were-Rabbit” is more akin to the subsequent “Office Christmas Special,” with the romance subplot concluded in clichéd Hollywood feel-goodery. It might be too much to suggest that there was studio pressure to deliver a happier ending, but it hardly seems a stretch to infer that the pressure of a broader audience nudged the filmmakers in a more cautious direction.

So what does this unabashedly cornball movie have to offer to jaded college students, particularly those for whom sincerity is an eighth sin? After all, the laughs frequently come from cheap one-liners and even cheaper puns that fail to be redeemed by their tongue-in-cheek delivery.

Well, for starters, the movie never tries to shove a lesson down your throat, and is driven not by characters’ quest to attain a moral high ground, but simply works as a nicely warped whodunit. Cinephiles will appreciate the homages to classic horror flicks sprinkled throughout the script. And if for no other reason, keep in mind that as hand-drawn animation quickly disappearing from screens, Wallace and Gromit may be the final vestiges of a manifestly man-made medium all too quickly succumbing to machinery.

—Staff writer Ben B. Chung can be reached at bchung@fas.harvard.edu.