Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

First thing to be said about Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit is that the plot is a load of old rope, or old vegetables, or old recycled movies, and old English quaintness, in no particular order and often mashed together like a fine old stew.

It seems the cardigan wearing Wallace and his loyal, silent hound Gromit, have now turned into a full franchise, whereby they’re allowed to recycle the hoariest of plots, like a fine old English frost – though given the painstaking work required for claymation, they’re probably a long way off covering the full range of twists available, as a Bond franchise does, or as science fiction shows like Serenity do when they walk through every western and Indiana Jones riff ever imagined.

In this feature film outing for W and G, the pair go through their usual waking and clothing and breakfasting routines, helped along by the usual Heath Robinson machines. Their line of work is a pest control business with an antique vehicle and a village desperately in need of help. The pair confiscate a plague of rabbits (and store and fed them humanely in the cellar below) from gardens and lawns, so the village can go about the business of preparing giant vegetables for the Lady of the Manor’s annual competition.

All the villagers are suitably English and quaint and grateful, including the good Lady Tottington (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter), who seems to be tilting towards a romantic interest in steadfast bachelor Wallace – despite already being the subject of attention from Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes), who loves shotgunning anything in sight, and who has an offensive dog. This canine, to whom Gromit naturally takes an instant dislike, looks like he’s seen a few too many Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

After establishing all this, Wallace cranks the plot up a notch and sets the world awry when he decides he’ll use a brain modifying machine to change the way the errant rabbits lust after vegetables. It’s no spoiler to reveal that the brainwashing machine kicks back on Wallace, so beginning a kind of riff on Frankenstein, which involves the village being infested by a huge and hungry Were-Rabbit. Wallace and Gromit fight the beast of course, and get into scrapes, and Gromit gets to drive the pest company car underground, and eventually the truth of the Were-Rabbit is discovered. That clears space for Wallace to tackle Quartermaine, or more to the point, for Gromit to get into a fight and a game of chasies with Quartermaine’s repugnant dog (here standing in for the most more amiable and original black suited Penguin villain).

It’s all very amusing in its own way, with a Vicar (Nicholas Smith) stumbling around, as if he’s just stepped out of a Hammer horror show, issuing dire warnings about all and sundry and the end of the world, and Lady Tottington hamming it up way beyond Penelope Keith (and that’s saying a lot). The quest for the Golden Carrot award is given a few twists, with the actual statuette getting a job in a blunderbuss, while the Vicar provides a couple of gold bullets to take out the were-rabbit. The creative team of Steve Box and Nick Park do their usual clever visual riffs, packing the action full of neat in jokes and gags, and stuffing the plot with as much energy as they can muster. The claymation is always fun to watch, and done with real cinematic flair, while the soundtrack boasts a solid array of English classical composers to add a touch of verdant green class (including a bit of Elgar).

It’s all determinedly twee in a very English way, and so it’s easy to forgive the many easy references to other shows, right down to a timely nod to King Kong.

Kids of all ages won’t mind the sense of old goods dressed up afresh – the audience for this show is already pre sold and in at the dvd rental and retail stores – but it’s very much like a favourite bit of fairy floss, or more to the point, an English cheddar without too much bite. Confirmed devotees – and they are legion - will settle back for a bit more of Peter Sallis doing the Wallace voice, and all the other voices doing their very best to be quintessentially English. Enough said. Fans will have a jolly spiffing time good time as they chortle at the jolly japes amongst chums. As Harold Hare once said, goody goody gum drops.

That said, the story barely cranks along to the eighty minute mark, and it would have been a lot tighter if it had stayed as a fifty minuter. The plot is thin, and Box and Park trade on their fans indulgence, tolerance and love of their characters. Nice work if you can get it. Dour cynical non fans might well be better off getting in the mood by exploring the shorter, better first few outings of W and G to avoid a feeling that some easy and cheap cheesy jokes have been wheeled out to make fromages of us all. But in a way that’s the price of upping the brand to feature film length, with Box and Park doing as much trickery as they can to keep the show full of color and movement.

 

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