Wallace and Gromit Movie Curse of the Wererabbit Review
While folks don't generally cite Nick_Park as a major figure in the independent filmmaking movement, there's no arguing that he's a director who has created a handful of truly distinctive movies and a clearly recognizable creative voice while working entirely on his own terms, both within and without the Hollywood studio system. Park has fashioned a visual and narrative style every bit as strong as Wes_Anderson or Paul_Thomas_Anderson, and he's a lot funnier than either of them, and half the fun of Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is seeing a movie that's so obviously the product of one man's (very witty) personal vision emerge as a tent-pole release for a major studio. Anyone who was afraid that the DreamWorks brass were going to mess with what made the early Wallace and Gromit shorts so much fun can breathe easy -- if The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a bit more manic in its pace and broader in its humor than A_Close_Shave or A_Grand_Day_Out (which is probably the product of its 85-minute running time as much as anything else), the characters and their comic style remain thankfully intact, and if one buys into Chuck_Jones' theory that an animator is really an actor, then Park and his crew have delivered Oscar-caliber performances as Gromit (whose eyes are more expressive than most human actors onscreen the same year) and Wallace (though Peter_Sallis' veddy-British voice work certainly deserves a mention as well). Park and his collaborator Steve_Box have packed their frames with layers upon layers of comic detail (if ever a movie was made with the DVD freeze frame in mind, it's this one), and in between laughs they've delivered a loving homage to the classic Hammer horror films of the 1950s and '60s, with a keen eye toward their shadowy visual style and color scheme. The humor manages to be smart and just a touch corny at the same time, and the laughs roll out consistently throughout the movie's running time. Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a thoroughly and delightfully enjoyable moviegoing experience, and an even better big-screen vehicle for Nick_Park's gifts than Chicken_Run. Mark Deming, Rovi
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