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"Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of The Were-Rabbit" is the
newest claymated film featuring our favorite heroes, Wallace the quirky,
cheese-fanatic and inventor and Gromit, his mute dog with expressive
eyebrows. But the newest movie is much different from the three shorter films
that preceded it. It is a feature film of an hour and thirty-four minutes,
while previously the films chalked up to about a half hour each. It becomes
clear while watching the earlier films, that they are somebody's projects,
put together with the utmost care and attention to detail, the genius behind
them is Nick Park, who had quite a bit of control over the most recent motion
picture. The majorities of each story take place on a few different sets,
centered around Wallace and Gromit's house. Typically, Wallace is the only
speaking character in these episodes, the one exception is in "A Close
Shave" when a woman named Wanda appears for a brief stint in Wallace's
life as a possible, but ultimately unsuccessful, love interest.
In the new movie, Wallace and Gromit run a bunny removal service called
Anti-Pesto which is in high demand considering the town's upcoming annual
Giant Vegetable Festival at which awards will be given out for the biggest
produce. Their business is progressing nicely with the help Wallace's
bunny-snagging inventions, from garden security lawn gnomes, to the Bun Vac
3000, which sucks bunnies out of their burrows without harming so much as the
fluff of their tails. But the Anti-Pesto team encounters a problem when
suddenly people's vegetables are being ravaged nightly at an impossible pace
and is suddenly forced to solve the mystery of the WERE-RABBIT!
Although the new movie draws a lot from the old films, it does not have
quite the same tone and originality as they contain. Obviously, it would be
near impossible for a blockbuster movie to keep an audience captivated for an
hour and a half with a whacky inventor talking to a silent dog, but the
addition of a medley of characters does change the tone. Suddenly Wallace and
Gromit's town, which had seemed deserted in other episodes, becomes full of
characters. Wallace by himself is charming and funny, but when other
characters get involved they take away some of the simplicity of Wallace and
Gromit's humor and add some predictable elements to it, including, but not
limited to, a few sophomoric, sexual jokes. At one point Lady Tottington or
"Tottie", a love interest for Wallace, is showing Wallace her
"Melons" held at chest height, and complaining that her boyfriend
has never shown much interest in them. But, despite these contrived attempts
at drawing mainstream audiences, it is hard to completely eliminate Wallace
and Gromit's charm and simplicity and it manages to shine through the
unoriginal muck that threatens to cloud it.
In "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of The Were-Rabbit," I was
disappointed to see Wallace lose another one of his love interests, as he did
in "A Close Shave." In that story, Wallace did not get together
with Wanda because in the end it was discovered that she hated eating cheese,
which, along with inventing, is Wallace's favorite hobby. In "The Curse
of The Were-Rabbit" there is no reason that Wallace and Tottie do not
get together, and a fan of Wallace cannot help but feel sympathetic towards
him and sad that he is never able to get the girl at the end of his
adventures. After all it is not ideal for a charming man as himself to live
out his life talking to his dog, however clever and awesome that dog might
be.
For dedicated Wallace and Gromit fans, it may also be somewhat
disappointing to see much of the material for the new movie, such as chase
sequences, recycled from the old films. The Were-Rabbit bears a strange
character resemblance to the penguin from "The Wrong Trousers,"
while Tottie and her boyfriend resemble Wanda and her evil dog, Preston of
"A Close Shave." One cannot be too upset that the old movies are
picked apart for the new one, however, because most of the new movie's
audience probably has not seen the old movies and so it is understandable
that some of the outstanding parts would be reused for Wallace and Gromit's
debut for a widespread audience. It is a little harder not to resent the
movie's departure from the feeling that it is the project of one driven mind
and its move to the less detailed approach of a typical, mainstream movie. It
no longer felt like it was someone's baby and moved to the feeling of a
movie with the disjuncted fingerprints of many hands, literally. Fingerprints
were actually visible on some of the little clay faces.
When all was said and done, "Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of The
Were-rabbit" was a good movie. The claymation was as fascinating to
watch as it ever was, and Wallace and Gromit remained the same lovable
characters that they always have been. Sure, it's not the same now that it
has gone mainstream, but nothing ever is.
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