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The Background
Director Nick Park has received Oscar nominations for each of his previous half-hour Wallace & Gromit films. After the success of Aardman Animation’s first full-length feature Chicken Run, there was a huge demand for a full-length Wallace & Gromit movie. Accordingly, Park and co-director Steve Box have spent the last five years developing The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The results have been worth the wait and if there’s any justice in the world, Wallace & Gromit will surely win Best Animated Film come Oscar time.

The Story
Cheese-loving inventor Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis from Last of the Summer Wine) and his brainy dog Gromit are running an humane pest-control service called Anti-Pesto. Their remit is to protect the town’s vegetables from hungry rabbits in the weeks before the annual Giant Vegetable Competition.

However, a giant rabbit begins terrorizing the town, eating all the vegetables and destroying everything in its path. With the town up in arms, the competition’s hostess Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter) hires Wallace and Gromit to catch the creature and save the day. This enrages her trigger-happy suitor, Victor Quartermain (Ralph Fiennes), whose plans for the creature involve heavy fire-power.

The Good
Unsurprisingly for a film that has taken five years to complete, there is a huge amount of detail up on screen. Park and Box are an astonishingly creative directorial team. Every frame is packed with ideas and barely a minute is allowed to pass without a pun, sight gag or one-liner that will have you laughing out loud.

The film also looks terrific, with a genuine sense of texture. That said, there is a small amount of CGI work this time round, but it’s used well and doesn’t seem out of place.

The Great
The inventive script is superb, gleefully stealing ideas from classic horror movies as well as Ealing comedies. The cast are wonderful too. Sallis gives Wallace an extremely loveable Everyman quality, whilst both Bonham Carter and Fiennes provide terrific comic support and really seem to be enjoying themselves. It’s also worth noting that Gromit is so beautifully animated that he manages to express a huge range of emotions and expressions without ever saying a word.

The Conclusion
In short, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a terrifically enjoyable film that doesn’t waste a second of its arse-friendly running time. A strong contender for one of the best films of the year and if it doesn’t win the Best Animated Film Oscar then there is something very wrong with the universe. In a word, unmissable.