***1/2 (out of ****)
Featuring the voices of Peter Sallis, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Peter Kay, and Nicholas Smith
Directed by Nick Park and Steve Box & written by Park, Box, Mark Burton, and Bob Baker
2005
85 min G
“Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” is an enormously entertaining bit of stop-motion fluff, marking the feature-length debut of its eponymous clay heroes. I must concede, though, that it cheats itself out of greatness by a few too many concessions to the conventions of mainstream kids’ films. If the previews and the “Madagascar” short film before “Were-Rabbit” are any indication, the vogue for children’s movies is noise, and lots of it. Maybe that’s the vogue for grown-up movies, too. The improbably lovable “Wallace & Gromit” shorts—“A Grand Day Out,” “The Wrong Trousers,” and “A Close Shave”— are certainly kid-friendly, but calling them “children’s films” might be a stretch. Much of their charm derives from how patient, gentle, and leisurely they are. One can’t imagine that the same children who thrive on computer-generated penguins who know kung-fu and soldier-talk would be able to sit still for “A Grand Day Out’s” quiet cheese outing to the moon.
Because, no, Wallace and Gromit are not stand-up comedians, celebrities, or pop culture icons made to voice Pixar avatars. Nemo and his Dad always feel like they’re glancing over their shoulders at us, as if to say “isn’t this funny, isn’t this clever?” Wallace and Gromit are the funniest kind of character: they don’t know they’re being watched. They don’t know anything they’re doing is funny. They’re kin to “The Triplets of Belleville” or people out of a Coen Brothers’ movie. Their creators convince us that Wallace and Gromit were “discovered,” not created. When Wallace puts up flower-print wallpaper in the spaceship he made in his basement, he’s not doing it to make us laugh. We laugh because he’s so focused on his happy little life that he thinks that a spaceship needs wallpaper.
Which brings us to “Curse of the Were-Rabbit.” Missing is a bit of the gentleness, the slowness, those moments when Wallace’s mellow befuddlement fills us with affection. “Were-Rabbit” is a bit too revved up and edited a little too fast. The ubiquitous Hans Zimmer gives it an oversized orchestral score that needlessly reinforces every emotion and drowns out what could have been sweet moments of silence. It’s like Wallace and Gromit creators Nick Park and Steve Box made one movie, then handed it over to a composer who gave it an extra layer that it didn’t need at all.
“Were-Rabbit” can also be faulted—and here’s when you need to follow me closely—for too many special effects. Just a moment, you say, isn’t the entire movie done in stop-motion clay animation? Isn’t it one long special effect? That’s true but, just like a superfluous score has been put on top of a charming film, a superfluous layer of digital effects has been put on top of the effects that we really want to see. We want to see little clay people worked by hand, not digitally manipulated. The same layer of fuzzy electronic gloss that coats many live-action special effects films—think “Kingdom of Heaven” or any of the recent superhero flicks—has now invaded the pleasant world of stop-motion. We even may find ourselves asking heretical questions during “Were-Rabbit” like, is every single limb and facial expression being created by an artist’s fingers, or are some of them done by computer?
Which isn’t to say that “Curse of the Were-Rabbit” isn’t a terrific entertainment. On the contrary, it’s probably one of the best movies of the year. I went in expecting greatness and only got very goodness instead. Anyway, Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) is still the inventor, a hopelessly middle-class Englishman, armed with endless resourcefulness, optimism, and sweater vests, and Gromit is his dog. Wallace is at once enormously imaginative and enormously unimaginative: in “A Grand Day Out” he makes a spaceship to go on a lunar picnic, in “The Wrong Trousers” he gets NASA equipment to help with dog walks, and in “A Close Shave” he uses any number of Rube Goldberg inventions for window washing. This is fitting, considering humankind, as a species, has put thousands of satellites in space, but few of them are death rays, alien finders, or places to live. No, most of them are for telephones and cable TV.
Wallace is such an intensely likeable, daffy sod that we understand why Gromit—who is, 9 times out of 10, the brighter of the two—is so devoted to him. Wallace is utterly transparent, thinks little that he is not willing to say, and is cheerful without bound so long as his genius can be put to work and rewarded with tea, cheese, and crackers. Gromit, on the other hand, never says anything, sees much more than Wallace, and is capable of jealousy, prejudice, and instinctive likes and dislikes. His feelings can be hurt and his ego can be bruised, and he rolls his eyes a lot at Wallace, a motion of which his human counterpart doesn’t seem capable.
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