My home town of Preston, England, is hardly known of this side of the Atlantic. We have a few claims to fame, though. The industrial armpit of Coketon in Charles Dickens’ “Hard Times” is apparently based on Preston. Our local soccer team was the best in the world during the 1890s. Arkwright invented the water frame here, revolutionizing the cotton industry in the 19th century. And the first KFC in England opened in Preston about 30 years ago. (There is also a rumor that the bus station in Tehran, the capital of Iran, is based on Preston’s—a white tiled, concrete behemoth, reeking of bad ’60s architecture and urine.) Into this cultural stew was born animator and director Nick Park.

Since joining Aardman animation studios in the mid 1980s, Park has racked up three Oscars with his Plasticine stop-motion animation shorts: “Creature Comforts” (1991), “The Wrong Trousers” (1994) and “A Close Shave” (1996). The latter two starred Wallace and Gromit, Park’s charming, enduring and symbiotic duo, a clumsy, eccentric inventor (Wallace, lovingly voiced by veteran British comic actor Peter Sallis) and his laconic canine sidekick whose on-screen capers involving jewel thieving penguins, sheep rustling, cyborg pit bulls and Wallace’s love of cheese endeared them to both children and adults the world over.

“Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” their first full-length feature, sees the heroically bumbling duo battling to save their town’s vegetables from an infestation of hungry rabbits before the annual harvest contest. As one local lady puts it “We’re simple folk! We live for that competition!” However, Wallace’s penchant for wacky inventions goes terribly wrong when he tries to cure the captured rabbits’ love of vegetables with a machine that sucks inappropriate thoughts from their brains. Like Jeff Goldblum in “The Fly,” Wallace’s mind gets connected with a rabbit’s, causing him to sprout big fluffy ears and wreak more havoc on the town’s beloved carrots, marrows and brassicas. Meanwhile, the villainous Victor Quartermaine (a surprisingly fantastic comedic turn by Ralph Feinnes) vows to blow the beast Wallace has become to kingdom come in order to woo the elegantly goofy Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter hamming it up brilliantly).

“Curse of the Were-Rabbit” is an unabashedly fun, warm, witty delight, devoid of Disney’s penchant for the sentimental. It’s also a refreshingly unpretentious effort in an era of CGI, which favors style over substance and loses some of the sweet magic of the old-style animation that Wallace and Gromit hark back to. Gags come by the truckload, with Park and Co.’s script prompting giggles and guffaws frame by frame. Indeed, watching it in a movie theater on a Saturday afternoon was a treat in itself, with the laughter of 7 year olds echoing the numerous sight gags and wickedly funny set pieces while the film’s witty word play and risqué double entendres raised chuckles from older members of the packed crowd. (The vegetable element of the story gives Park a lot of leeway here.) 

The world of Wallace and Gromit epitomizes the grit, character, humor and spirit of the north of England, and through his adventures in Plasticine, Nick Park has given this a universal accessibility. “Curse of the Were-Rabbit” does all this with a sublime finesse and style, echoing horror classics like King Kong and Frankenstein and even old war movies, with a particularly stunning “dogfight” as Gromit and Quartermaine’s menacing hound take off in World War I fighter planes from a fairground roundabout (the former in a Flying Corps machine, the latter in one with German insignia).
A picture of Nick Park clutching his third Oscar hangs in the pub of Preston’s train station. “Curse of the Were-Rabbit” should give him his fourth.

directed by: Steve Box and Nick Park
written by: Nick Park, Bob Baker, Steve Box, Mark Burton
starring: Peter Sallis, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Peter Kay, Nicholas Smith
rated: G by the MPAA