Written by Linda
March 09, 2009
Toothy and simple Wallace and his sidekick, the silently resourceful pup Gromit, bring their adventures to the big screen with unsurprisingly hilarious results.
I can always credit Nick Park and Aardman Animation for creating a movie-moment that made me laugh so hard (and so abruptly) that I crumpled into a fetal position, twitching violently, with silent tears rolling down my cheeks. My friends pounded me on the back for about five minutes until I could finally elict a shuddering gasp, followed by an explosion of shrieking laughter. This moment came during the claymation short film Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers ("these trousers have gone very wrong!"), and the scene is not worth describing here, as words cannot do it justice. Let's just say it involved one inexplicably sinister-looking penguin that happened to be shaped exactly like a bowling pin. It's just one of those moments that makes me love movies to bits.
To my delight, the endearing duo Wallace and Gromit now have a feature-length movie to call their own. Though I enjoyed Park's first big-screen outing Chicken Run quite a bit, I found myself longing for that loveable chap Wallace, and his expressive, silent, but extremely intelligent dog-sidekick Gromit. Avid inventors, in the past Wallace and Gromit have gone to the moon and back (in search for cheese) and created "techno trousers" for walkies. Now they run a business called Anti-Pesto, a vermin-wrangling business that promises vegetable-growers a humane riddance to rabbit infestations. Whoever thought up the visual contraption that is the Bun-Vac, well, I just want to crawl inside their head and play forever!
The town is all a-twitter as Lady Tottington's Annual Giant Vegetable Competition is coming up, and rabbits seem to be breeding like, well.... When Lady Tottington herself (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter) calls upon Anti-Pesto to help her bunny infestation, Wallace and the Lady become smitten with each other. Her wanna-be beau Victor Quartermaine (played perfectly smarmy by Ralph Fiennes) is none too pleased with the competition, so is delighted when an experiment by W & G goes awry and the bunny problem explodes in the village. A giant were-rabbit (who comes out at the full moon) is running rampant through the town, eating all the prized giant vegetables, and something needs to be done!
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, like previous W & G outings, has a field day affectionately mocking how very British it is, as well as dropping odes to countless classic films (for instance Jaws, King Kong, and An American Werewolf in London). You don't have to catch all the references to enjoy the film, by any means. The screenplay is cheeky, sharp, and awfully cute, all wrapped into one. The look of the unique characters is wonderful—Lady Tottingham's outfits should get a Costume Design award—and all united by Aardman's distinctly toothy grins and contorting lips.
I had heard that some studio bigwigs (DreamWorks, perhaps?) insisted that the character of Wallace be voiced by a "name" actor, rather than Peter Sallis, who has voiced the character since the first W & G short A Grand Day Out (1989). Thank goodness Park & Co. put their collective foot down, because Sallis is to Wallace as Dan Castellaneta is to Homer Simpson. You may not know what the man behind the voice looks like, but he IS the character, and bless him for that. The voice talent, the screenwriters, and all the creative brains behind Wallace & Gromit make Aardman Animation the Pixar of claymation filmmaking. It may take them literally years to make their next picture (and rebuild their studio), but I'll happily wait, with my fingers waving excitedly in the air!
