Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
★★★½ — Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
Nick Park had already introduced Wallace and Gromit to the world across three acclaimed short films (A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave, the latter two winning Academy Awards) before this 2005 feature marked the pair's first full-length outing. Co-directed with fellow Aardman animator Steve Box, the production was a joint venture between Aardman and DreamWorks Animation, a partnership that had previously yielded Chicken Run in 2000. Made on a reported $30 million budget, the stop-motion process is notoriously labour-intensive, with animators typically producing only a few seconds of usable footage per day. The film went on to gross over $190 million worldwide and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, at the time only the second non-American production to do so.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) is Aardman at the peak of its powers. A feature-length expansion of the duo's world that loses none of the charm, wit, or tactile beauty of their shorter outings. Directed by Nick Park and Steve Box, the film transplants our cheese-obsessed inventor and his long-suffering canine companion into a full-blown Hammer horror pastiche, complete with misty moors, villagers clutching pitchforks, and a lycanthropic menace terrorising the annual Giant Vegetable Competition. The stop-motion animation is nothing short of exquisite: every woolly jumper, every leaf on every cabbage, every expressive eyebrow raise from Gromit feels lovingly handcrafted. The gags land with clockwork precision (visual, verbal, and gloriously silly) and the voice cast (including a deliciously pompous Ralph Fiennes as the villainous Lord Victor Quartermaine in what is probably my favourite role for him so far) commits fully to the absurdity. What elevates it beyond mere pastiche is its heart. Beneath the monster-movie homage lies a gentle, deeply British comedy about community, eccentricity, and the quiet heroism of loyalty, embodied, as ever, by Gromit himself. Wallace bumbles; Gromit acts. Their chemistry remains the franchise's bedrock, and the film understands that the real magic lies not in the spectacle, but in the silent glances between man and dog. A near-great family film that earns its place just behind The Wrong Trousers in the canon. It's funnier, warmer, and more visually inventive than almost anything else in the genre, though the slightly baggier runtime of a feature means it lacks the diamond-sharp precision of its half-hour predecessors. Still: a triumph of craft, comedy, and character. Delightful from first frame to last.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2005 | Watched: 2026-03-31
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Nick Park: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) · A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008) · A Grand Day Out (1989) · A Close Shave (1995)
More with Peter Sallis: A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008) · A Grand Day Out (1989) · A Close Shave (1995) · The Wrong Trousers (1993)
More from United Kingdom: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) · Blue (1993)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
