The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

''Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'' is a 2005 stop-motion animated film produced by DreamWorks Animation and Aardman Animations. It was directed by Nick Park and Steve Box (in Box's feature directorial debut) as the second feature-length film by Aardman, after '' Chicken Run'' (2000). It was the last DreamWorks Animation film to be distributed by DreamWorks Pictures, as the studio spun off as an independent studio in 2004 until being acquired by Universal Pictures in 2016. The film premiered in Sydney, Australia on 4 September 2005, before being released in cinemas in the United States on 7 October 2005 and in the United Kingdom a week later on 14 October 2005.

''The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'' is a parody of classic monster movies and Hammer Horror films and also serves as part of the '' Wallace and Gromit'' series, created by Park. The film centres on good-natured yet eccentric cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his intelligent quiet dog, Gromit, in their latest venture as pest control agents. They come to the rescue of their town plagued by rabbits before the annual Giant Vegetable Competition. However, the duo soon find themselves against a giant rabbit consuming the town's crops.

The film features an expanded cast of characters relative to the previous ''Wallace and Gromit'' shorts, with a voice cast including Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes. While the film was considered a box-office disappointment in the US by DreamWorks Animation, it was more commercially successful internationally. It also received critical acclaim and won a number of film awards including the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, making it the second and last film from DreamWorks Animation to win that award. In January 2022, a stand-alone sequel feature film was announced, which is due to release in 2024 on Netflix worldwide, except for the UK, where it will premiere first on the BBC before also coming to Netflix at a later date.

Plot

As Tottington Hall's annual giant vegetable competition approaches, cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his beagle Gromit provide a humane pest control business known as "Anti-Pesto," protecting people's vegetables from pests, including rabbits and keeping them in their basement. One evening, after capturing rabbits found in the garden of Lady Tottington, Wallace uses two of his latest inventions, the "Bun-Vac 6000" and "Mind Manipulation-O-Matic," to brainwash them into disliking vegetables so they can release them back into the village. All goes well until Wallace accidentally sets the Bun-Vac to "BLOW," and his brain is fused with that of a rabbit, forcing Gromit to destroy the Mind-O-Matic. The transfer appears to have worked, as the rabbit shows no interest in vegetables. They name the rabbit Hutch and place him in a cage.

That night, a giant rabbit devours many people's vegetables but Wallace and Gromit do not respond. During a town meeting the next day, the vicar, Edward Clement Hedges dramatically reveals the creature to be the legendary ''Were-Rabbit''. Hunter Victor Quartermaine offers to shoot the creature, but Lady Tottington persuades the townsfolk to give Wallace and Gromit a second chance. Wallace devises a plan to lure the rabbit out by driving around the village at night with a life-size female rabbit strapped to their van. After dislodging the rabbit by driving through a tunnel, Wallace leaves Gromit in the van to go and retrieve it. While waiting, Gromit spots the real rabbit and gives chase through the village and a giant rabbit hole but is unsuccessful.

Gromit follows the burrow and eventually resurfaces in the morning and is shocked to find himself in his garden. He follows a set of muddy footprints leading into the house and seemingly down to the basement. Wallace concludes that Hutch must be the suspect and rushes off to tell Lady Tottington that the beast has been caught. Gromit locks Hutch in a high-security cage. Gromit then sees the trail of footprints continues past the basement, up the stairs, and into Wallace's bedroom where he finds a pile of half-eaten vegetables inside, indicating that Wallace is the real culprit.

Gromit rushes to Tottington Hall to prevent Wallace from transforming. But on their route home, they are cornered in the forest by Victor, who vies for Lady Tottington's affections and fortune. Wallace transforms into the Were-Rabbit under the full moon and flees. Now seeing the perfect chance to eliminate his rival, Victor obtains three "24- carrot" gold bullets from Hedges, to use against rabbit Wallace.

On the day of the vegetable competition, Gromit reveals to Wallace that the experiment has swapped his and Hutch's personalities; the latter is now carrying his human traits and is the only one who can fix the Mind-O-Matic. Before Hutch can finish, Lady Tottington visits and informs Wallace of Victor's plan to shoot the were-rabbit; as the moon rises, Wallace begins to transform again and hastily forces Lady Tottington to leave. Victor arrives and attempts to shoot Wallace with the golden bullets, but Gromit helps Wallace to escape by donning the female were-rabbit suit. Once Victor is gone, Gromit with help from Hutch devises a plan to save Wallace.

Wallace arrives at the competition and is nearly shot by Victor but is saved by Gromit. After running out of gold bullets, Victor takes the Golden Carrot trophy to use as ammunition. Wallace, carries Lady Tottington atop Tottington Hall and reveals his true identity to her. Meanwhile, Gromit subdues Victor's dog, Philip, in a dogfight using aeroplanes taken from a fairground attraction. Gromit then steers his plane into Victor's line of fire as he shoots at Wallace, causing the carrot to hit the plane instead. The damaged plane falls and Wallace jumps to grab Gromit, sacrificing himself to break his fall into a cheese tent. Gromit quickly disguises Victor as the female were-rabbit, causing Philip and the townspeople to chase him away.

Wallace morphs back to his human self and appears dead, but Gromit revives him with Stinking Bishop cheese, undoing the curse of the Were-Rabbit. Lady Tottington awards Gromit the Golden Carrot for his valor and converts the grounds of Tottington Hall into a nature reserve for Hutch and the other rabbits.

Voice cast

* Peter Sallis as Wallace, an eccentric, absent-minded and accident-prone yet good-natured inventor with a great fondness for cheese, who runs Anti-Pesto with his dog and best friend, Gromit.
** Sallis also provides the voice of Hutch, a kidnapped rabbit who gradually develops several of Wallace's mannerisms — his dialogue consists entirely of phrases and statements previously made by Wallace — after an attempted mind-alteration goes awry and who is at first suspected to be the Were-Rabbit. Sallis' voice was digitally accelerated to create that of Hutch's.
** Gromit is Wallace's silent, brave and highly intelligent dog who cares deeply for his master, and saves him whenever something goes wrong.
* Ralph Fiennes as Lord Victor Quartermaine, a cruel upper class bounder and a prideful hunter who is courting Lady Tottington. He wears a toupee and despises Wallace and Gromit.
** Philip is Victor's vicious but cowardly and dimwitted hunting dog who resembles a Bull Terrier. He is too cowardly to face the Were-Rabbit so he instead targets Gromit.
* Helena Bonham Carter as Lady Campanula Tottington, a wealthy aristocratic spinster with a keen interest in vegetable horticulture and 'fluffy' animals. For 517 years, the Tottington family has hosted an annual vegetable competition on their estate on the same night. Lady Tottington asks Wallace to call her "Totty" (which is a British term for attractive women) and develops a romantic interest in him. Her forename, Campanula, is the scientific name of a bellflower, and her surname is taken from the Lancashire village of Tottington.
* Peter Kay as Police Constable Albert Mackintosh, the local village policeman who judges the Giant Vegetable Contest, though he would prefer it if the "troublemaking" competition didn't happen.
* Nicholas Smith as Reverend Clement Hedges, the superstitious town vicar and the first resident to witness the Were-Rabbit.
* Dicken Ashworth and Liz Smith as Mr. and Mrs. Mulch, neighbours of Wallace and Gromit who raise prize-winning pumpkins.
* Edward Kelsey as Mr. Growbag, an elderly resident of Wallace and Gromit's neighbourhood and a founding member of the town's vegetable growers council.
* Mark Gatiss as Ms. Blight, a resident of Wallace and Gromit's neighbourhood.
* Geraldine McEwan as Miss Thripp, an Anti-Pesto customer. McEwan reprises her role in ''A Matter of Loaf and Death''.

Production

In March 2000, it was officially announced that ''Wallace and Gromit'' were to star in their own feature film. It would have been Aardman's next film after ''The Tortoise and the Hare'', which was subsequently abandoned by the studio in July 2001, owing to script problems.

The directors, Nick Park and Steve Box, have often referred to the film as the world's "first vegetarian horror film". Peter Sallis (the voice of Wallace) is joined in the film by Ralph Fiennes (as Lord Victor Quartermaine), Helena Bonham Carter (as Lady Campanula Tottington), Peter Kay (as PC Mackintosh), Nicholas Smith (as Rev. Clement Hedges), and Liz Smith (as Mrs. Mulch). As established in the preceding short films, Gromit is a silent character, communicating purely via body language.

The film was originally going to be called ''Wallace & Gromit: The Great Vegetable Plot'', but the title was changed, as the market research disliked it. The first reported release date for ''The Great Vegetable Plot'' was November 2004. Production officially began in September 2003, and the film was then set for release on 30 September 2005. In July 2003, ''Entertainment Weekly'' referred the film as ''Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit''.

Park said that after separate test screenings with British and American audiences, including children, he adjusted the characters' speech for American audiences. Park was often sent notes from DreamWorks, which stressed him. He recalled one note that Wallace's car should be trendier, which he disagreed with because he felt making things look old-fashioned made it look more ironic.

The vehicle Wallace drives in the film is an Austin A35 van. In collaboration with Aardman in the spring of 2005, a road going replica of the model was created by brothers Mark and David Armé, founders of the International Austin A30/A35 Register, for promotional purposes. In a 500-man-hour customisation, an original 1964 van received a full body restoration, before being dented and distressed to perfectly replicate the model van used in the film. The official colour of the van is ''Preston Green'', named in honour of Nick Park's home town. The name was chosen by the art director and Mark Armé.

Release

The film had its worldwide premiere on September 4, 2005, in Sydney, Australia. It was theatrically released in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and the United States on October 14, 2005. The DVD edition of the film was released on February 7, 2006 (United States) and February 20, 2006 (United Kingdom).

Home media

In Region 2, the film was released in a two-disc special-edition that includes '' Cracking Contraptions'', plus a number of other extras. In Region 1, the film was released on DVD in widescreen and full-screen versions and VHS on February 7, 2006. Walmart stores carried a special version with an additional DVD, "Gromit's Tail-Waggin' DVD" which included the test shorts made for this production, making of the Were-Rabbit creature, memorable moments of the film titled as "Gromit's Favorite Scenes", a video showing the legacy of the "Wallace and Gromit" franchise, an instructional video on how to draw Gromit, as well as "Cracking Contraptions" shorts.

A companion game, also titled ''Curse of the Were-Rabbit'', had a coinciding release with the film. A novelization, ''Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: The Movie Novelization'' by Penny Worms (), was also produced.

It was the last DreamWorks Animation film to be released on VHS. It was re-released on DVD on May 13, 2014, as part of a triple film set, along with fellow Aardman/DreamWorks films '' Chicken Run'' and ''Flushed Away''.

A Blu-ray edition of the film was released by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment in the United States on June 4, 2019.

Reception

Box office

''Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'' opened in 3,645 cinemas and had an opening weekend gross of $16 million, putting it at number one for that weekend. During its second weekend it came in at number two, just $200,000 behind '' The Fog''. It remained number one worldwide for three weeks in a row. ''The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'' grossed $192.6 million at the box office, of which $56.1 million was from the United States. As of , it is the second-highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time behind Aardman’s first film, '' Chicken Run''.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews and an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "''The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'' is a subtly touching and wonderfully eccentric adventure featuring Wallace and Gromit." On Metacritic, the film received a weighted average score of 87 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "universal acclaim." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

In 2016, ''Empire'' magazine ranked it 51st on their list of the 100 best British films, with their entry stating, "The sparkling ''Curse Of The Were-Rabbit'' positively brims with ideas and energy, dazzling movie fans with sly references to everything from Hammer horrors and ''The Incredible Hulk'' to ''King Kong'' and ''Top Gun'', and bounds along like a hound in a hurry. The plot pitches the famously taciturn Dogwarts' alumnus and his Wensleydale-chomping owner (Sallis) against the dastardly Victor Quartermaine (Fiennes), taking mutating bunnies, prize-winning marrows and the posh-as-biscuits Lady Tottington (Bonham Carter) along for the ride. In short, it's the most marvellously English animation there is."

Accolades

Soundtrack

Aftermath

After the box-office failure of ''Flushed Away'' resulted in a major write down for DreamWorks, it was reported on 3 October 2006 and confirmed on 30 January 2007 that DreamWorks had terminated their partnership with Aardman. In revealing the losses related to ''Flushed Away'', DreamWorks also revealed they had taken a $29 million write down over ''Wallace & Gromit'' as well, and the film under performed expectations despite grossing $192 million against a budget of only $30 million.

Following the split, Aardman retained complete ownership of the film, while DreamWorks Animation retained worldwide distribution rights in perpetuity, excluding some United Kingdom television rights and ancillary markets. Soon after the end of the agreement, Aardman announced that they would proceed with another ''Wallace & Gromit'' project, later revealed to be a return to their earlier short films with ''A Matter of Loaf and Death'' for BBC One.

During production of the short, Park remarked publicly on difficulties with working with DreamWorks during the production of ''The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'', such as the constant production notes and demands to alter the material to appeal more to American children. This discouraged him from producing another feature film for years, with Lord noting that Park preferred the “half hour format”. However, in January 2022, a new ''Wallace & Gromit'' feature film was announced, which is due to release in 2024 on Netflix worldwide, except for the UK, where it will first premiere on BBC before coming to Netflix at a later date.

Notes

References

External links

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''The Curse of the Were-Rabbit''
at the Official ''Wallace & Gromit'' website
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