Liz Smith

The Wallace & Gromit shorts have always been lovingly crafted animated treats. With claymation being a dying art these days; they are a rare delicacy to watch, as well as a good laugh. With the time-consuming nature of stop-motion animation, a full length feature is an arduous undertaking, and the masters at Aardman Animations have done just that. Wallace and his partner Gromit have finally broken onto the big screen, bringing all there great adventure and wonderful animation with them. The Giant Vegetable festival looms, local growers prep their mighty veg day and night. These agriculture efforts are being threatened by an overabundance of bunnies; the pests have been breeding, as the film puts it, like rabbits. Wallace and his four legged partner, the true brains of the partnership Gromit, are on the job; rounding up the furry beasts by the truck load. Wallace with his mad inventor fashion, and his wish to win the affections of a lovely local vegetable enthusiast, devises a plan to deal with this flood of rabbits for good, endeavoring to alter the bunny?s love of carrots. Wallace transmits his own distaste for greens into the minds of his captives, through the use of one of his Rube Goldberg like apparatuses. As these things tend to transpire, and despite Gromit?s uneasiness and endless eye rolling, Wallace?s plain goes into effect, his mind-altering contraption unknowingly creates a monster; the frighteningly adorable Were-Rabbit is unleashed onto the vegetable loving neighborhood. The Claymation is nothing short of gorgeous, they entire world is handcrafted this can be felt in the texture of each lovingly created character and object, with only a slight use of CGI for a few imposable to manipulate objects. The extremely laborious nature of stop-motion makes it truly astounding to see a full length feature of this quality. Faces are beautifully expressive; having a feeling of tangibility, of physicality. Character motion is wonderfully whimsical; the style of animation brings a strange distinctiveness to gestures. This world was created out of plasticine, crafted with a painstaking attention to detail and appearance. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a huge breath of fresh air, in a world full of cookie cutter computer generated films, being mass-produced from every render farm in Hollywood; I fell in love with its sincere characters and its remarkably fresh look. It?s a grand fun adventure from the first carrot; this is no Disney Princess rubbish, it?s an adventure full of warmth and energy with an honest narrative, it does not pander to kids, it does not embark to sell action figures or sing-along tapes. A rarity for animation, with the exception of the geniuses at Pixar, a quality plot and developed characters fill this wonderful world of clay and vegetables.

a smashing good movie .... made me want to read the book

The book was great so the fact that this movie more closely resembles it was a welcome suprise. However, the original movie is an all-time family favorite so this one paled by comparison.