The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

Ah, Aardman Studios. When I was but a wee nipper, I often perused the kids' programmes on both French TV and the good old BBC. You see, Belgian television still had to catch on back then and so my gaze was directed to foreign shows. You can blame the French for my adoration of France Gall as Dorothée and also my thing for anime, which they showed in abundance. They just edited out the sex, but showed the violence of 'Dragonball' or more specifically 'Fist of the North Star' in all its glory.

Good days.

But the BBC had shorts with a claymation figure called Morph. These adventures were hilarious, and it wasn't until years later I discovered that the Studio responsible for this was Aardman, who by that time had won an Oscar for the first Wallace & Gromit outing: 'A Grand Day Out'. This was claymation on a whole new level. Wallace & Gromit was funny, looked great and had better writing and timing than most comedy or children's shows. This had stuff for the kids, but also for adults.

And then the duo got their own feature, 'The Curse of the Were-Rabbit' and even though 'The Wrong Trousers' will always be my favourite outing of the pair, this film keeps getting better with every viewing. I'll explain why in a minute.

In their hometown, there is the annual vegetable fest where people from all over come to show of their huge veggies in order to win the grand prize. Small problem: there's also a plague of rabbits. Wallace & Gromit have started a pest control company called 'Anti-Pesto' in order to safeguard everyone's produce. But Wallace wants to rehabilitate the bunnies and engages in mind alteration experiments, and that is when the proverbial dung starts to hit the proverbial windmill...

The great thing about this one is that, even though this is a full length instead of a short, it keeps the quirks and dynamic between our protagonists very much alive. They haven't tried to spice things up and keep everything as much fun and endearing as always. The setpieces and action scenes are a lot bigger, mind you, and sometimes it is truly mindboggling how they were able to juggle that many things on screen at once, knowing full well that everything is completely handmade and hand controlled by stop motion. Bloody impressive. At first viewing, this is a loving ode to classic horrorfilms and you will  find many of the tropes and winks, but the more you watch it, the more you will discover. The writing is very clever, so a lot of jokes land really well, but if you do repeated viewings, you will notice that even in the background, there are a lot more jokes and puns than you would first expect. Trust me, this one is filled to the brim with clever finds and it just keeps getting better and better. Kids will love it for the fun story and animation, adults will love it even more for all the clever puns and jokes.

Honestly, I can not recommend everything Wallace & Gromit-related enough. Heck, you also know the spin-off 'Shaun the Sheep', which might even be better, because there they don't rely on voices to get everything across.

'The Curse of the Were-Rabbit' comes highly recommended. If you have already seen it, watch it again and try to spot more jokes that time around. You'll thank me for it.