Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

England’s favorite animated inventor, Wallace, and his levelheaded dog Gromit run a pest-control service faced with a monstrous rodent that is ravaging the vegetable gardens of the town. For this first feature-length Wallace and Gromit adventure, the magic finally fails directors Nick Park and Steve Box. They seem to have come up with a nifty title (perhaps inspired by Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and then tried to dream up a story to fit it, when it should have been the other way around. The Wallace and Gromit shorts started out simple and got progressively more complex, but here the contrivances overwhelm the story and the visual wit, and Park and Box betray the nature of Wallace’s basic character (sweet, clueless, harmless and ineffectual). It’s a surprising misstep from the people who gave us Chicken Run.