Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

(2005)

I’d heard about Wallace and Gromit for a long time, but never seen one of their shorts. This is the first feature-length, and there will probably be more, given the stellar reviews for this one. I admire the devotion of these people who have stayed with stop-motion in an age of CGI, but I can’t say I understand it. The process takes a degree of patience that is almost incomprehensible to me. And they did cheat quite a few CGI effects in, but why not? I don’t know how you’d do fog in stop-motion.

Wallace is a goofy but nice inventor. He has a million gadgets, many of which work as advertised. When they go wrong, the disaster usually seems to be sorted out by Gromit, his sidekick dog, who doesn’t speak, and is a lot smarter. The humor is fairly broad, with a sly zinger tossed in now and then. I quite enjoyed this, but can’t think of a lot more to say about it.