Bunnies have rarely been funnier than in “Wallace &Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” a bright new animated film. They scurry, they steal and best of all they float weightless inside the glass bubble of a Bunny Vacuum designed to keep them out of the vegetable patch.
| Droll: The claymation characters from Britain’s Aardman studio return in this pun-filled pleasure about a mutated rabbit attacking vegetable patches. Very droll and understated when it needs to be, which is most of the time.
Rated: G Now showing: tk |
This movie comes from the brain of Nick Park and his cronies at Britain’s Aardman studio, whose claymation style fueled “Chicken Run” and earlier Wallace &Gromit short films.
If you have never met Wallace &Gromit, they are a man and his dog, although the usual roles are reversed: Wallace is an impulsive, cheese-loving blithe spirit, while the unspeaking canine Gromit is droll, responsible and put-upon.
In this film, they run a security service that protects local citizens from intruders in their vegetable plots. (Garden gnomes with glowing red eyes function as robotic sentinels.) It’s especially important now, on the eve of the annual contest to measure the town’s largest vegetables.
That’s where the Bunny Vacuum comes in, a Wallace-designed device that sucks up the rabbits out of their holes. Unfortunately, Wallace has another bright idea about rabbit brain modification, which results in the creation of a “were-rabbit,” a monstrous bunny that can elude any of their security measures.
Park and co-director Steve Box cram the movie with lots of bad puns (if you hear “Beware the moon!” you know someone’s going to drop their trousers) and some very English attitudes. But it all translates very neatly.
“Curse of the Were-Rabbit” is the second stop-motion animated film released in the last three weeks, after “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.” Like that film, it looks great, although the style is much jollier here: big, colorful pumpkins and goofy humans. The Rube Goldberg contraptions are fun, but even better are the subtle facial expressions – especially on Gromit, a dog with an exquisite sense of deadpan reactions that rivals Oliver Hardy’s.
The movie never takes off into the stratosphere, but that’s part of the appeal of the Aardman style – it’s quietly amusing rather than raucous. It doesn’t rely on famous actors in the voice cast, although Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes are good in supporting roles. No, this film is simply a pleasure, and that’s quite enough.
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