Wallace & Gromit

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Directors: Steve Box, Nick Park)















WALLACE AND GROMIT won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature

Box helped out with two of Park's other W & G adventures, A Close Shave and The Wrong Trousers, as well as Park's feature debut Chicken Run. Written by Box, Park, collaborator Bob Baker and Madagascar co-writer Mark Burton.

The Wallace & Gromit shorts are some of the most enjoyable pieces of entertainment you will ever see. Park won two Oscars in this series for Best Animated Short Film, nominated for another, and when he lost in 1991 for A Grand Day Out he won for Creature Comforts. They are immensely likeable and clever.

The fun continues in this movie, where once again cheese-loving inventor Wallace (Peter Sallis) and his dog Gromit are now humane rodent catchers, Anti-Pesto they call it. Their business is catching rabbits who want to destroy gardens full of vegetables and their business is especially important considering the annual Biggest Vegetable Competition is coming soon. Since they are humane, they merely keep the rabbits at their home and feed them (the rabbits are freakin' hilarious), and space is getting scarce. An idea occurs to Wallace that he should try to rehabilitate the rabbits so that they can loose them back into society. Of course, a combination of inventions goes wrong, and Wallace finds himself turning into a monster rabbit when the moon comes out (which also, hilariously, changes one bunny into a Wallace-like rodent). Meanwhile, less-than-humane Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes) looks to kill the were-rabbit and win the heart of Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter), a woman Wallace also fancies.

Look out for sight gags, extremely subtle racy humor, and pretty good movie references, but the fun is the characterizations of all the players. And look for those rabbits to downright steal every scene they're in. It's just a good time at the movies. Nick Park is one of those guys, like Brad Bird, who I don't think can do any wrong.

By the way, you get another treat in the beginning of the movie as Dreamworks unleashes a short featuring the Madagascar penguins. Penguins were hot this summer, and I'm sure Dreamworks was slapping themselves, even though they had a hit, that they didn't make Madagascar more penguin-centric. So here's 15 more minutes for you, and it's fun.