MOVIES: Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Nick Park & Steve Box, 2005)

This one is a complete delight. Wallace and Gromit, who've starred in three superb short films, make the leap to feature length with total success.

Wallace is a slightly dotty inventor, and Gromit his loyal dog, who usually winds up rescuing Wallace from the problems caused by his inventions. This time around, the two have gone into the garden-security business as Anti-Pesto, protecting gardens from ravaging rabbits. Wallace attempts to brainwash the bunnies into hating vegetables, and before long, the neighborhood is being terrorized by a giant furry beast. Once again, it's up to Gromit to save the day.

The movie is made in claymation, with clay figurines moved a fraction of an inch for each frame of the film, and took five years to complete. The low-tech nature of the animation -- you can occasionally see the animators' fingerprints in the clay -- is part of the movie's charm. It is astonishing how expressive the characters' faces are, especially that of Gromit, who has no voice (heck, he doesn't even have a mouth), but manages to express infinite variations on "oh, dear lord, what has this fool gotten me into now" with the subtleties of a raised brow.

The voice performances are very good; Peter Sallis has voiced Wallace for 15 years now, and hits just the right tone of slightly befuddled confidence. The movie's other principal actors are Helena Bonham Carter, the very model of stuffy upper-class dithering as Lady Tottington, and Ralph Fiennes, clearly having a grand time, and surprisingly funny as the gung-ho hunter Victor Quartermaine, who has no patience for the humane methods of Anti-Pesto.

Were-Rabbit is rated G, but in the finest British tradition, there are a few subtly bawdy double entendres, and enough intelligent humor to keep the adults happy; they may actually enjoy the movie more than the kids, who probably won't pick up on a lot of the references to other movies, everything from King Kong and Frankenstein to the classic Ealing comedies.