Gregory Perler

Despicable Me is a decent enough little animated film about one man's quest to be the world's top super villain, although eventually it becomes obvious he simply wants to be a famous astronaut. It's sort of a classic story about a redeemable villain, but in all honesty Gru doesn't seem very villainous. He's stolen the Times Square jumbotron, but thats so his minions (aliens? a genetically created servitor race? Gremlins?) would have a super size TV to watch football on. In fact Gru seems more like a mere antisocial outcast who treats those he likes with kindness, and those he doesn't know with rejection and loathing. It often seems like he and his minions are more like a cooperative team than Master and Slaves the way the old Sci Fi movies usually show Mad scientists and their minions. He even pays them. What kind of evil Mad Scientist pays his Minions and buys them gifts? When it seems as if his dreams of space travel are crushed the Minions even pool their own personal money to help him out. Honestly he seems more of a gruff, self centered butthead than an evil monster. The movies world is an interesting place with Mad Scientist villains in the every day news, most of them financed by Lehman Brothers, now known as the Bank of Evil. And it's rife with oddball inventions (my favorite being the Pirhana Gun). So while it's not a masterpiece of animation due to little flaws, it's a lot more enjoyable than most of the crap playing this summer. Fans of the old Looney Tunes style cartoons will particularly enjoy the Minions whenever they get screen time.

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.

The Toronto Maple Leafs haven't won the Stanley Cup since 1967, but I say for everyone who hasn't watched this atrocity that this film will be a larger curse on them than not winning the Cup. It is THAT bad...the only way it could have been worse is if they had Uwe Boll direct it. That's how bad it is.