The Oscar for this year’s Best Animated Feature belongs right here.
Before Creative Loafing gets sued by Rolling Stone for plagiarism, let it be noted that the above line was written by RS critic Peter Travers, and that this snippet of copy is being used across the top of the ads for Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. Burton’s stop-motion extravaganza is indeed a worthy contender for the gold, but it can’t match the giddy pleasures of the clay-animated Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which is not only the best animated flick of the year but also one of the most enjoyable outings in any genre. (Mr. Travers, if you decide to transfer your line from one film to the other, be sure to let the respective studios’ publicity departments know well before deadline.)
Then again, as someone who has a Wallace & Gromit mouse pad at home, a Wallace & Gromit screensaver at work and a Gromit icon for my Fantasy Football team logo, I might be a tad biased. Ever since this English odd couple reached our shores back in the 1990s, I’ve been a staunch supporter of the cause, even procuring Diebold voting machines to fix the results of the Oscar ceremonies in which their short films were in competition (just kidding; unlike a certain political party, I’m not that sleazy).
Animator Nick Park first showcased the characters — befuddled, cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his more intelligent canine companion Gromit — in a trio of award-winning short films (see sidebar), then gave the pair a rest as he put his efforts into the delightful 2000 feature film Chicken Run. This is the first feature-length W&G outing, and while the longer running time (85 minutes, the same as the three previous works combined) suggests the possibility of a good idea stretched beyond its breaking point, the truth is that The Curse of the Were-Rabbit never wears out its welcome — even normally impatient tots should find themselves held captive for the duration.
In this yarn, Wallace (voiced as always by Peter Sallis) and his silent sidekick have taken it upon themselves to rid their burg of its rabbits by forming a pest control outfit called Anti-Pesto. Using Wallace’s latest invention, the Bun-Vac 6000, the team is able to humanely capture all the bunnies that have been helping themselves to the neighbors’ garden patches. But shortly before the annual Giant Vegetable Competition is scheduled to take place, one of Wallace’s experiments goes horribly awry, and the result is a monstrous rabbit that eats its way through the townspeople’s prized possessions. Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter), the event’s hostess as well as Wallace’s potential love interest, wants the were-rabbit captured but not harmed. However, her jealous suitor, gun-crazy Victor Quartermaine (a hilarious Ralph Fiennes), hopes to blast the creature with the gold bullet he acquired for his trusty shotgun. Wallace’s bumbling efforts do little to aid the cause, so once again it’s up to Gromit to save the day — and the were-rabbit.
Long-standing fans will be delighted that Julian Nott’s jaunty score from the shorts has been retained for this film, and they’ll get a kick from the sly references to the lads’ earlier adventures. But make no mistake: Unlike the new sci-fi flick Serenity (see Film Clips for a review), an offshoot of the TV series Firefly, this one requires no knowledge of the lead characters’ previous exploits to enjoy the film on its own terms. You don’t have to be aware of Wallace’s overwhelming love of cheese to appreciate the titles in his bookcase (East of Edam and Fromage to Eternity, for example), and no prior exposure is required to catch Park’s homage to classic horror flicks (King Kong and Frankenstein among them). The rampant wit extends to the smallest details — the minor character of the police constable is named PC Mackintosh — and even the one nod toward the crudity found in most kid flicks today (a gag involving nuts) made me laugh out loud.
Tom & Jerry? Mutt & Jeff? Chip & Dale? Amateurs all. It appears that in the toon world, the clay’s the thing, with Wallace & Gromit as the new pioneers of Plasticine.
W&G On DVD
If The Curse of the Were-Rabbit does win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, it won’t be Nick Park’s first Oscar victory. Four of his projects have been nominated in the Best Animated Short category, with three of them going on to win the award (and the only one not to win lost out to one of his other productions). The 1989 piece Creature Comforts, about philosophical zoo animals, was Park’s first Oscar winner, but it’s his three 30-minute Wallace & Gromit shorts that cemented his standing.
All three of the W&G titles — 1989’s Oscar-nominated A Grand Day Out, 1993’s Oscar-winning The Wrong Trousers and 1995’s Oscar-winning A Close Shave — have already been issued as a DVD box set. A Grand Day Out finds Gromit and the cheese-loving Wallace building a spaceship so they can fly to the moon and pig out (after all, everyone knows the moon is made of cheese). The Wrong Trousers, the collection’s masterpiece, has Wallace renting a room to a malevolent penguin planning a major art heist; naturally, it’s left to Gromit to vanquish the villain in the most imaginative way possible. And A Close Shave places Wallace in a burgeoning romance with the shy Wendolene Ramsbottom even as Gromit is framed for sheep-napping by a metallic RoboDog.
Check these out for yourself — and then be prepared to stock up for Christmas gift-giving.
This article appears in Oct 5-11, 2005.
