Movie Review: Wallace & Gromit

Last weekend, Tom and I left Ben with his uncle and sneaked out to see the #1 movie in the country. That's right--for our hot date we saw the G-rated Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

We've been fans of Aardman animation since seeing the Wallace and Gromit shorts on video. (A Close Shave always makes me giggle.) Chicken Run, their first full-length feature, was enjoyable but lacked the magic of the earlier shorts. I avoided reading reviews of this new movie because I didn't want to know the best jokes beforehand, but I did note that Entertainment Weekly gave it an A.

The short that preceded the movie (featuring the penguins from Madagascar), had its funny moments, but it was not nearly as good as what followed. Once the cheery W&G theme music started, I was quivering with anticipation.

Aardman England is a pedestrian place, where drab and earnest people live in narrow row houses and tend their gardens with fervent devotion. The details--women in shapeless housedresses, little town shops, a country fair, the delight people find in cheese and crackers and tea--are not glamorous. But this is humor of earnestness, not the humor of sarcasm and put-downs that often passes for children's entertainment.

As always, Wallace is a kind and clueless inventor who never sees how his inventions might go wrong. His long-suffering dog Gromit helps Wallace implement his plans. Gromit can communicate more with sagging ears or a lifted eyebrow than many human actors can with a full-blown monologue.

As the movie opens, Wallace and Gromit are patrolling the town and countryside as part of their duties at AntiPesto pest control. The town vegetable-growing competition is only days away, and the duo must protect people's prize fruits and vegetables from ravenous rabbits. Wallace, seeking a humane alternative to killing the rabbits, creates a machine to brainwash them into rejecting vegetables. When his invention goes awry, however, he inadvertantly creates the menacing were-rabbit.

The revelation of the were-rabbit--who is at first shown only by shadows and footprints--is nicely done, and I was surprised by the plot twist. The homage to old-time Hollywood monster movies such as Frankenstein and King Kong is humorous without being overdone. At the showing we attended, the jokes appealed to both the adults and kids in the audience, without being mean-spirited or crude. At the end, the fight scene between the two dogs provides lots of drama, and Gromit shows heroism by sacrificing something very close to his heart to save Wallace.

My only quibble was the ending--without giving away too much, I'll just say that part of the resolution isn't explained. Thirty seconds of further development would have gone a long way towards making the ending more plausible. That said, though, I highly recommend this movie, and I hope it spends many more weeks at #1.

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On a sad note, this morning a fire destroyed the headquarters of Aardman Animations in Bristol. Lost were the sets of A Grand Day Out, A Close Shave, The Wrong Trousers, and Chicken Run. Despite this loss, Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park showed a stiff upper lip and noted that, in light of the recent earthquakes in Asia, "Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies, today isn't a big deal."