Wallace and Gromit have starred in 14 comedy shorts, ten of which emerged from a 2002 television series. The present movie is their only feature-length film. Other Nick Park successes include the 2000 movie Chicken Run, and various projects involving Shaun the Sheep.
In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) and Gromit (not voiced at all) are small business owners ridding English properties of rabbit infestations. The rabbits are captured and held as adorable prisoners in pens at Wallace's home.
Wallace's newest and most important client is Lady Tottington (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter). The wealthy Lady Tottington is romantically pursued by Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes), a cynical toupee-wearing hunter. Quartermaine sees Wallace as a rival for Tottington's fortune.
Wallace attempts to brainwash his captured rabbits into non-vegetarians, which would allow their release from imprisonment. But Wallace's scheme backfires, and upon the full moon he turns into a gigantic rabbit. Quartermaine becomes intent on shooting this oversized bunny, particularly once he realizes that the giant hare is actually Wallace under a curse. Of course, it is up to Gromit to save his hapless master from Quartermaine's golden bullets.
How others will see it. The world had been waiting a long time for a Wallace & Gromit feature, and Park's efforts were rewarded with critical and commercial success. The film won Best Animated Feature at the 2006 Oscars, and picked up similar trophies at other major festivals.
Today at imdb.com, the movie has a healthy 142K user votes and a fairly lofty user rating of 7.5 out of 10. The vast majority of viewers enjoy the family-friendly Claymation feature, but there are some humor-impaired Scrooges out there who don't like stop-motion animation or, presumably, much of anything else.
How I felt about it. The Wallace & Gromit franchise peaked early, with their classic shorts The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave. These can be seen in Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection (2009), which doesn't really count as a stand-alone feature as it is an assemblage of shorts.
But the humor of Wallace and Gromit continues in fine style with Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The characters are just as you remember them, as is the clever stop-motion animation and inventive, witty plot.
For whatever reason, the humor is less whimsical and more uproarious with Wallace and Gromit than the Shaun the Sheep franchise. Nick Park is constrained to some extent by the need of his films to be family friendly, and his humanoid characters are as homely as they are funny. But it is endearing that Gromit remains loyal to his idiotic master, even though he must realize life would be easier with, for example, Lady Tottington. Easier, but certainly not as funny.