You have to give the plasticine slingers and Aardman Animation all the credit in tbe world. I mean, when you consider that they already had a pair of beloved animated characters all ready to, the fact that they swerved from expectations and instead made their debut feature about a bunch of hens trying to escape a farm run like a prisoner of war camp took huge, possibly perfectly animated, cojones. However, after the superlative Chicken Run capably proved to the world Aardman could play in the cinematic realm with the likes of Pixar, Disney and Ghibli, the animation studio finally went back and gave the world what it was clamouring for in the first place: a Wallace And Gromit movie.
But one question remained. While the duo’s previous adventure, The Wrong Trousers was as perfect an animated adventure you could ever hope to get, it was only also only thirty minutes long. Could the cheese obsessed inventory and his long suffering canine companion pull off the same trick when their plasticine world is stretched to feature length?
Ever the entrepreneur, Wallace has managed to channel his inventive inventions and his over reliance on technology into creating Anti-Pesto, a humane pest control business that patrols the streets, seeking to keep the village’s vegetables safe from the destructive forces of hungry, mischievous rabbits. The reason everyone is so paranoid about keeping their veg safe is because the annual giant vegetable competition is fast approaching and is being held by Lady Tottington in her expansive hall. However, when Wallace and his long suffering pooch, Gromit are summoned to Tottington hall to safely take care of an infestation of babbling bunnies, it kicks of a string of events that might put every carrot, marrow and pumpkin in town in a bit of a stew.
You see, after Wallace and Lady Tottington show some sparks, it enrages potential suitor and crazed hunter Victor Quartermaine who feels that the best way to stop a rabbit infestation is to blow them away point black with a shotgun. However, in an attempt to rehabilitate the rabbits back into society, Wallace unwisely uses his Mind Manipulation-O-Matic to brainwash the wriggling rodents into disliking vegetables despite much world weary face-palming from Gromit. Unsurprisingly, things go wrong and Wallace and one of his long eated subjects have their brains zapped a little too much leading to some rather dire side effects.
You see, when the full moon rises high in the night sky, it now causes a terrible transformation to occur that means not a single vegetable in the surrounding area is safe. Panic is rife that a large beast is prowling the streets, gorging itself on innocent crops at will and the town and Lady Tottington now look to Anti-Pesto to save the upcoming competition. However, while Wallace is making goo-goo eyes at Tottington, Gromit discover that this malevolent “Were-Rabbit” has a devastating secret. The boys had better hop to it.
If I had to call it how I see it, I’d have to hand it to Chicken Run by a beak when it comes to the best cinematic offers that Aardman has gifted us over the years, but that doesn’t mean that Curse Of The Were-Rabbit doesn’t more than hold its own when it comes to crafting a near flawless animated adventure that children of all ages can enjoy. The main issue (if Were-Rabbit has any) seems to be Wallace himself as the bumbling, tech reliant fella just doesn’t seem to have enough of an actual personality to base a movie around other than knocking up ill-advised inventions and being horribly negligent to his devoted sidekick and even the addition of Helena Bonham Carter’s toothy love intrest doesn’t really help the character rise to suit a movie length format even though hes equiped with Peter Sallis’ iconic vocals. Gromit, on the other hand, was positively born (or molded) to carry these movies despite the fact that he doesn’t utter a single sound. Literally everything he thinks, does or feels is conveyed through a little blob of clay with noticable fingerprints decorating his skin and the Aardman animators manage to achieve this miracle by channeling the universal art of silent comedy from everything from Charlie Chaplin to Mr Bean. Every exasperated eye roll, every face palm, every little nuance is somehow clearly defined on a face that’s little more than two eyes, a blobby nose and a pair of ears and the moments when the movie wisely hamstrings Wallace with an amusing case of lepus-thropy, the film vastly springs into life in leaps and bounds.
What also greatly enhances this fictional world of absurdly quaint Englishness is that the world that Wallace And Gromit lives in has been greatly expanded beyond just psycho outlaw penguin, Feathers McGraw and we now have a whole village of toothy eccentrics for our leads to play off including Ralph Fiennes’ egotistical and follically challenged Quartermaine and Nicholas Smith’s magnificently designed Reverend Hedges who delivers possibly one of the greatest groan inducing puns revealing why the Were-Rabbit can only be killed with a golden bullet (“Twenty…. four…. carats!”). In fact, that weaponized form of dad joke becomes one of Were-Rabbit’s most vital weapons, especially when delivered by such capable pun merchants as Peter Kay as the local copper on the scene and I’d go as far to say that the line “If you ask me, this was arson… Yeah, somebody arsin’ around.” is so good, it demands to be studied for the betterment of mankind.
Magnificent animation, stellar world building down to a macro level, perfectly judged jokes (chef’s kiss for the Nun Wrestling magazine) and lovable characters are all aspects we’ve come to expect from Aardman over the years, however, the final piece in the Were-Rabbit puzzle is the studio’s dedication to the time they’re trying to achieve and while you could argue that Chicken Run is essentially a World War II movie for kids, this movies seems to be going all out to create a Hammer horror flick for families to enjoy. The atmosphere is perfect, with misty allotments and even a genuine jump scare or two and the directing duo of Nick Park and Steve Box go all out to invoke werewolf movies of yore to make it accurate as possible with that Aardman twist. Wallace’s hand stretches much like David Kessler’s in An American Werewolf In London, there’s plenty of scenes of the Were-Rabbit roaring and howling on rooftops and even the Reverend screams “Beware the moon!” when a character accidently gets their bottom out. But the visual nods don’t end there as the animators also chuck a whole bunch of images lovingly cribbed from the likes of Jaws and King Kong to keep that vein of absurdity well and truly tapped.
While Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit sometimes shows the strain of the duo having to fill up a feature length adventure, there’s still more than enough of Aardman magic to go around and fans of animation, Hammer, massive overbites and damn good movies will find endless reasons to howl at the moon in celebration.
Cracking film, Gromit.
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We Have Issues 
Ugh.
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