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Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit October 10, 2005 |
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God bless those exhausted Brits and their fabulous clay at Bristol’s Aardman Studios, they sure know how to tell a good story, and they sure know how to do it with style, grace, and about 1,000 pounds of impossible plasticine molding. It took them an ungodly five years to mold, move, paint, polish, re-mold, re-move, re-paint, and re-polish every single glorious frame of “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit”, and for their tireless efforts, which included hand painting painstakingly intricate backgrounds, some 700 plus computer touch-up effects shots, and hours upon hours of manpower making sure the fingerprint quotient was kept to a minimum on their perfectly sculpted characters, they’ve come out with a family-friendly Halloween comedy as good, if not better, than its feature studio debut “Chicken Run”, and fellow October stop-motion hit “Corpse Bride”. Nick Park’s Oscar winning Wallace and Gromit shorts were a hard act to follow, and some naysayers thought the duo, a bumbling bald, cheese-loving inventor, and his smart, mute pet dog, wouldn’t translate well to feature length, but they were dead wrong, for the charming team is as fresh and funny as ever, and with a smattering of equally charming and hilariously sculpted new characters joining the two, the 90-minute film is an absolute breeze. It’s great fun to look at, with eye-popping animation that rivals the best of any pure CGI feature, a joy to laugh at, with characters and goofy situations situated in a none-too-realistic country town obsessed with giant vegetables, and a marvel to behold, as the exhaustive effort put forth by the brilliant producers is never lost on the appreciative fan. For those who haven’t seen the old mini-films, recently released together on one DVD set, this new feature is as good as any to introduce you to the wonderful world of Wallace and his cherished, highly expressive mutt Gromit. The plot to the movie, directed by Park and Steve Box, is silly and amusing, following W & G’s business venture as humane pest control specialists, hired by local neighbors to capture veggie-hungry rabbits in the weeks leading up to the town’s annual giant vegetable contest, held by the carrot shaped Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter), with whom Wallace has an immediate crush. Their business, the Anti-Pesto S.WA.T. team, prides itself on the ethical treatment of bunnies, but Lady Tottington’s lecherous toupee-wearing wannabe fiancé, Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes), is a hunter at heart, and when one of Wallace’s experiments in “Rabbit Rehabilitation” goes wrong, and a giant bow-tie wearing Were-Rabbit lets loose on the town’s vegetable crop, Victor clashes with our sweater-sporting Dr. Frankenstein over how to get rid of the beast. The plot leads to numerous funny chase sequences, including one marvelous underground sequence with Gromit chasing the creature at high speeds in his beat up green van (after the chase he presses the de-mud button to shake free of the excess dirt build up), and culminates at the giant vegetable contest, where a confrontation between the Were-Rabbit and Victor takes on the guise of King Kong, in an entirely playful send-up. The story is fun for both the children, who will laugh at Gromit’s baffled expressions as his owner mucks up plan after plan, and adults, who will find a sophisticated British humor at play, as well as a charming flirtation between Lady Tottington and the shy Wallace, but the thrill of ‘Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ is in the stunning clay animation. The aforementioned underground chase sequence is out of this world, and must have taken months, if not years, to animate in full, while the savvy directors and layout artists match shot for shot, dissolve for dissolve (Lady Tottington’s hair into clouds, frozen pictures on Wallace’s wall into the real thing) like magicians. Tim Burton’s “Corpse Bride” was more memorable for it’s character designs and musical score, and for that, it was a top notch stop-motion production, but nobody does clay work quite like Nick Park and the geniuses at Aardman studios, and this ‘Wallace & Gromit’ farce is some kind of animated gem. “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ is playing at the Movie-Plex 59. by Adam Suraf |