2005 Would see Wallace & Gromit head to the big screen for their first feature length outing in ‘Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ and it really does kind of feel like the culmination of nearly 15 years worth of trial and error in animation coming to near beautiful fruition.

The plot finds our lovable pair taking a turn at pest removal, specifically a sharp incrase in the appearence of bunny rabbits. These fluffy monstrocities are wreaking havoc on the local populations allotments and greenhouses ahead of the towns annual fruit and vegetable competition! ‘Anti-Pesto’ is the name and humanely removing bunny rabbits from gardens via a giant vaccume is their game!

While tending to a HUGE job on the estate of the RIGHT honourable Lady Tottingtons, Wallace strikes on an idea, what if he uses one of his OTHER new inventions (a machine that allows you to brainwash yourself or others) to brainwash the rabbits he’s captured into NOT liking vegetables,meaning they could all be re-released and the gardners and growers need not fear teeth marks in their giant carrots!

Well, of course the plan kind of backfires, when Wallace and a test rabbit called ‘Hutch’ end up having a bit of a ‘Runaway Brain’ moment, slowly turning Hutch into a Hutch Wallace hybrid, and turning Wallace into the most deadly Were-Rabbit!

Gromit cottons on fairly early to the situation, but with the town beying for the creatures blood and Wallace not being really aware of his near beastly side, will the pair find a way to restore law and order, or will Wallace find himself being stalked by Lady Tottingtons deviois suitor Victor Quartermaine?

And…I kind of felt myself in a bit of a love hate relationship with this one. Ultimately, it left me a little frustrated.

On the one hand, the script *feels* like a Wallace & Gromit script, which may sound obvious, but it IS a good thing that it does, ‘A Matter of Loaf & Death’ showed us what can happen when you make a Wallace & Gromit film without really fully throwing yourself behind the concept. This wholeheartedly WANTS to pull the audience into the scenario, and I think it largely succeeds with that. However, that doesnt mean its not without its flaws…

For a starters, as the longest running entry in the ‘Wallace & Gromit’ franchise, clocking in at 84 minutes and change, it really doesnt feel a comfortable fit. This felt like it should have been a 60-70 minute feature at most, and unlike ‘Vengence Most Fowl’ which is also feature runtime, this feels every bit as long as those 84 minutes are. It has some moments that are genuinely slow and not in a slowburn, pleasent way…in a ‘We have to stop the film to explain a bunch of stuff, so sit tight for 10 minutes…’ kind of way. Which really does hinder the pacing and causes the act structuring to feel a little wonky on the first and second acts…It manages to stick the landing with a genuinely well paced out 3rd act…but the build to that, I found to be a bit of a struggle.

Equally; this is really the start of the more ‘on the nose’ references to other films. ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’ would do this to frankly painful degrees. But here, we have references and parodies to ‘An American Werewolf in London’ , the Universal adaptation of ‘The Wolf Man’, ‘The Fly’, several Hammer films get a nod here…and…while they are a *bit* better handled here than in ‘Loaf’ I still really dont want to watch Wallace and Gromit to see it parody other movies, sometimes to an almost 1:1 degree. I watch these films for the charming ‘Northern England’ comedy that I appreciate because im a Northern Englander. I dont want them doing stuff that wouldnt feel out of place in a ‘Minions’ movie…

To that end, I need to talk about ‘Hutch’ as a character, While a vital mechanism to the plot. and the character did make me properly laugh once. AS a character he feels terribly out of place here and emblematic of a wider problem this film has. Which is that it essentially cherry picks several moments from the shorts and redoes them, but not as good as they were handled in the shorts. Hutch essentially being a redux of Shaun the sheep from ‘A Close Shave’, theres a plane sequence that harks back to the various plane sequences from ‘A Close Shave’…the breakfast machine from ‘The Wrong Trousers’ is referenced MULTIPLE times and at one point, is actually ANOTHER key plot device for the film. Its bad enough that this film has bad parodies of good movies in it, but when its stooping so low that its essentially REDOING it’s OWN ‘best bits’ but not as good…Well, I took umbridge with that…

This is also the first time that the wider town that the pair live in is explored. Wendy was obviously introduced in their last outing, but up until this film, she was the only other human character we’d seen…Here, we have a whole village! and apart from Victor and the Vicar, they’re all TOTALLY unremarkable and really quite rather dull…In fact, Victor and the Vicar only really work as characters because Victor is playing an amalgum of Christopher Lee Hammer/Amacus roles and the Vicar is essentially a parody of Dr. Pretorious from ‘Bride of Frankenstein’…Its nice to see archtypes like that on screen again…But Im still not sold on if they work here.

Beyond the script…I really dont have a lot more to say honestly, the direction and cine here is pretty good! Not *quite* the same calibre as the shorts or ‘Vengence’ but, its a studio production, with studio money and given the time and effort that goes into making these things, I have to say even when it doesnt feel particualrly ‘inspiring’ its still BLOODY impressive.

The performances are all pretty solid, Peter Sallis probably gives his final ‘good’ turn as Wallace here, and Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes both delight as Victor and Totty respectively. they bright, give great vocal ranger performances and the animation marries up to their delivery perfectly. Thats not to do a disservice to the rest of the cast who are all fine enough, but I do feel like the above are really the ‘best’ of this.

And finally, the soundtrack! which…well! it’s ‘Wallace and Gromit!’ big brass band orchestral pieces from tail to snout, its well timed, sounds inkeeping with everything that came before it…it’s probably not a *great* sign that, if you had told me this score was just made up of tracks from the shorts with no original music, i’d have believed you (given this was an entirely original scoring…) but hey it fits the bill and does the job…I cant complain.

All in all? I think out of all the films, this ones kind of the middle of the pack. If you’ve never seen a Wallace and Gromit movie, it’s probably a rock solid introduction, as if you start with the shorts, your likely to feel a bit spoilt by the time you hit this one. This? isnt their best outing in my opinion, but has more than enough good stuff going on in it that It feels at home with the better entries in the series. I really quite enjoyed it, I just wish it was shorter. and I kind of wish i’d checked this one out sooner, given its been 20 years since it came out…ah well, we live and learn. Worth checking out i’d say! go grab some cheese and crackers and enjoy the bunny carnage!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/wallace-gromit-the-curse-of-the-were-rabbit/