Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit Review (2005) – An incredibly silly, fun and ridiculous film that will leave you smiling!
We hope everyone had a great spring holiday celebration last weekend! We had the best time watching this silly little film, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. This is another one that is nostalgic for us. We watched it growing up usually around this time of year!
We thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie again. We have quite literally not seen it since we were kids, so it was super fun as well as a surprising viewing experience! It pokes fun at a few horror films, and is filled with adult humor!
Not to worry those of you who have children. The adult humor is most likely going to go right over your little ones heads and you as an adult, will get some extra enjoyment out of the movie! It is a sweet and simple film but sometimes that is just what we need!
We will do everything we can to not give too many spoilers in this review but there are likely to be some, so please take that into consideration and read cautiously.
The film starts with the classic Wallace and Gromit theme song as we view a wall covered in pictures of Wallace and his adorable dog Gromit. The camera pans from one picture to another showing their relationship and their life together. Being pet owners ourselves we think it is very adorable!
Next we get a shot of a full moon and the title of the picture appears! Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit! Cut to a police officer, P.C. Mackintosh, (Peter Kay), moseying down a dark lamp lit street whistling.
Some noises cause him to pause, but he moves on with his patrol. The camera seems to be from the perspective of something or someone! Moving quickly we go into a garden…where we see a garden gnome with red eyes turn to look at the intruder.
Next a quiet alarm bell goes off and we fade to a house with a wall covered in what appears to be random photos of people…all with lightbulb eyes. The eyes of an elderly woman are blinking on and off with an alarm.
We can see at the top of the wall a sign that says, “Our Valued Clients.” The camera slowly pans into the kitchen where we see the stove turn on and heat a tea pot! The whistling of the tea pot and the steam coming out of the spout cause some cogs and mechanisms to turn, moving a large finger attached to a long piece of wood to poke Gromit’s bed from underneath.
This, of course, wakes Gromit up, a cute white dog with brown ears and very expressive eyes. We then see Wallace, (Peter Sallis) an older man with a bald head and sweet disposition being lured awake by a large chunk of cheese. We love cheese…so we feel you Wallace! Cheese is amazing…but we digress!
Both Wallace and Gromit slip out of bed into a type of slide that carries them both down to their work boots. From there they get tossed, and strung around by a variety of different mechanics until they are fully dressed in their pest control outfits with their coffee still in hand!
Next the two get lifted up into their pest control vehicle where they are quickly on their way to deal with the pest emergency!
They get to the location, and they are both trying to be clever and quiet. Carefully peeking into the garden before Gromit manages to bag…something! Something large and persistent! Whatever creature they have captured does not want to be!
Gromit gets dragged around the garden briefly before the bag is removed and we see the culprit…a little brown bunny dragging a giant pumpkin behind him. The rabbit gives a silly grin and tries to get away but Wallace grabs him and holds him up.
Mrs. Mulch, (Liz Smith), rushes out of her house and thanks Wallace profusely for saving her prized pumpkin.
“All in a night’s work Mrs. Mulch!” Wallace says. Gromit touches his cap in acknowledgement. They place the bun in their car and get inside.
We get a clear shot of the name of their business on the vehicle, Anti-Pesto S.W.A.T. Team. Wallace calls out the car window “Subject disarmed and neutralized!” before speeding off. But, what are they going to do with the bun? Where are they going?
The villagers or town’s people come out to thank the heroes of their vegetables and protecting their yearly Giant Vegetable Competition! They go on to indicate quite strongly that they hope the rabbits are…unable to return.
Cut to the next morning, Gromit’s hand is waving eerily over a variety of kitchen knives…he is clearly trying to select the right one for the job. He settles on one, sharpens it and…chops up a ton of carrots!
He uses the knife to push the carrots from the portioned plates, down a little shoot that leads to bunny cages. The carrots drop into a small serving bowl and the bunnies dig in!
The rabbits are clever and a few manage to escape their pens! Gromit quickly captures them and sends them back down the shoots into their enclosures.
A light and an alarm go off on the wall…the light is next to the word breakfast. Wallace is pressing a button for service complaining about how long and hard the night was. He is in need of a good breakfast!
This is where we get mildly annoyed with Wallace. Gromit was up all last night too, and he was up early feeding the rabbits while Wallace slept in…we feel that Wallace should be getting his own butt out of bed and making his own breakfast. Back to the film though!
Wallace wheels out a tea tray, and pulls a lever on the wall. Wallace is supposed to slide from the bed into a trap door that drops him in his seat at the table downstairs…unfortunately though the trap door is no longer large enough for him to slip through, so he gets stuck.
Gromit pulls an extra lever that causes a giant mallet to hit Wallace on the head and push him the rest of the way down. It is so silly. It would have been easier for Wallace to have simply walked down the stairs!
He lands in his chairs and gets dressed via more mechanical arms and mechanisms while he is seated at the table. Wallace asks Gromit about the buns, “Must be getting a bit full down there.”
Gromit nods in agreement looking worried. He serves Wallace breakfast…which is a plate of vegetables. Wallace is trying to lose weight? He looks fine and the whole trap door on the floor is silly…he could just walk instead.
But Wallace is supposed to be dieting so he can fit in the trap door, and Gromit is trying to support this. Wallace is not happy about it.
Wallace convinces Gromit to go check on his own prized vegetable while he tries to sneak some cheese instead of eating the breakfast.
Gromit knew he was going to do this and put mouse traps where Wallace hides his cheese. Gromit pulls a mouse trap off of Wallace’s hand and Wallace admits he may have a bit of a cheese problem.
Wallace tells Gromit about a new invention he has come up with to potentially help him with this! A mechanical console lifts out of the table and Wallace pushes a big red button. Out of the ceiling comes an odd dome like contraption that attaches to the top of Wallace’s head!
“The Mind Manipulation-omatic!” Wallace declares as it settles onto his head. It is supposed to extract unwanted thoughts and desires. It has not been tested yet and Gromit is looking incredibly concerned.
Gromit does not like the look of the machine and he especially does not like that it has not been tested. Wallace is about to test it anyway…when he gets a phone call that stops him.
It is Lady Tottington, (Helena Bonham Carter), calling about a rabbit problem she is having at her estate. She urges Wallace to get there quickly when her doorbell rings! Believing it to be Wallace, Lady Tottington goes to the door, opens it and finds Victor.
Victor, (Ralph Fiennes), is the antagonist of the film. He is shorter than Wallace, with a very large toupee and a snobby look to him. He hands Lady Tottington a large bouquet of red roses.
Lady Tottington is pleased with the flowers and surprised to see him! He apparently heard through the grape vine about her rabbit problem and decided to take it upon himself to try to sort it out for her.
Flattered Lady Tottington lets him know that she has already called Anti-pesto. But Victor goes on calling her cute pet names, and talking about her estate as if it were his. This makes Lady Tottington uncomfortable and she reminds him that they are not married.
“All in good time, my dear.” Victor says as his dog, Phillip, hands him his gun. Victor trounces off leaving Lady Tottington calling after him that she wants this handled in a humane fashion.
Wallace shows up to the estate and is amazed at the extent of the infestation. The whole estate is covered in rabbits! He pulls out a type of large vacuum that he invented to suck the rabbits right out of ground and into a safe container.
Victor attempts to shoot a bun, when suddenly the bunny gets sucked into Wallace’s Bun-Vac!
Victor is confused, loses his toupee to the bun-vac and gets sucked down into the rabbit hole himself! Lady Tottington sees Wallace and adores his invention. This way no Rabbit is hurt! Wallace is extremely happy to have impressed his crush.
Victor is too large to get sucked into the vacuum but his head gets stuck in it. Covered in dirt and furious he demands his toupee back. Wallace does not understand what he wants but Victor pushes past him, enters the chamber filled with rabbits and mistakenly puts a black rabbit on his head.
He walks away with confidence as the rabbit wave’s goodbye to the other rabbits. It is funny, and ridiculous but that is truly the essence of this movie.
Wallace and Gromit pack up, and get in the car. As they are leaving Lady Tottington asks Wallace what he does with the rabbits. Wallace awkwardly tells her it is a trade secret. Lady Tottington goes on about how much rabbits love vegetables and how that cannot be changed.
This gives Wallace an idea…what if that can be changed? They get back to the house and open up what appears to be a large door that showcases the moon, while they also attach the bun-vac to the mind manipulation-omatic.
Wallace believes that they can “brainwash” the bunnies and solve their population problem. He thinks that if they stop wanting to eat vegetables that they can be released back into the world because they will no longer be trying to eat peoples gardens.
We here are wondering, what will they be eating instead? Are they no longer going to want to eat vegetation in general? This could be bad because that is what their bodies are built for…but Wallace is not concerned about this!
He uses lunar panels to because they are supposed to enhance brainwaves, places the mind manipulation contraption on his head and starts chanting, “Veg bad!” “Say no to carrots, cabbage and cauliflower.”
Gromit turns on the bun-vac at Wallace’s demand and at first it appears like the silliness may be working! Settling back to read while the brainwashing commences Wallace accidentally kicks the lever on the bun-vac from suck to blow!
This pulls a bunny into the mind manipulation-omatic pressing it against Wallace’s head! The mind manipulation-omatic is still on there is some kind of weird mind melding happening.
Gromit turns off the bun-vac and breaks the glass of the mind manipulation-omatic getting it off Wallace’s head.
Wallace quickly tests the rabbit with a carrot to see if anything worked and miraculously the bun turns his nose up to the carrot. Happy with his success, Wallace names the bunny Hutch, places him in a pen by himself, and walks off as if everything is just fine!
Cut to later the night, Gromit is spending some time with his prize vegetable in the greenhouse and counting down the days until the competition. He leaves the greenhouse and the camera pans a bit to show the neighbors locking down their vegetables as well.
Everyone is very obsessed with their vegetables and excited for the competition!
But something weird is going on in the bunny room…the box that Hutch is shaking profusely and breaks out!
Cut to Reverend Clement Hedges, (Nicholas Smith), in his holy greenhouse that is in the cemetery next to the church, he prays over his vegetables and leaves. But he feels like he is being followed or watched.
He is setting up a table full of vegetables close to the alter. The door opens eerily and blows all of the candles out! The Reverend thinks that someone in need of food has come into the church, and is being welcoming…that is until he sees what it is!
Terrified he uses 2 cucumbers to make a cross and they get eaten! He passes out and the table of vegetables gets demolished. The mysterious monster then goes from garden to garden, greenhouse to greenhouse, eating as many vegetables as it can!
Anti-pesto’s traps, safeguards, all of it does nothing to stop this ravenous creature!
Gromit wakes abruptly the next morning to every alarm going off. He sees the kitchen is a bit disheveled. The refrigerator door laying open, the tea pot not in its proper spot…confused Gromit gets Wallace down the trap door for breakfast.
Wallace is clueless at first until he hears all of the alarms going off. Oh no! All of their customers have been hit!
The town’s people are not happy! They are pissed off and have congregated at the church to discuss this new menace and blame Wallace for their vegetables being destroyed.
Police officer Mackintosh thinks that this is just a local prank and expresses his annoyance at the vegetable competition in general. The Reverend, in an old school wheelchair creepily wheels himself down the center aisle.
“This was no MAN!” he exclaims. He rolls his squeaky wheel chair down to the cop before standing and walking back down the aisle exclaiming that they have sinned, tampered with nature and the creature has been sent there to make them repent!
“Lest you, too, taste the wrath of…” Reverend dramatically spins and shouts, “The Were-Rabbit!”
As the movie continues, Wallace and Gromit are doing their best to deal with the Were-Rabbit issue and come up with some hilarious ways to try to capture it. Victor tries to sabotage Wallace as much as he can due to Wallace’s and Lady Tottington’s budding attraction for each other. There is a lot of poking fun at some classic horror tropes and movies. It is all very lighthearted and entertaining!
The mystery of who the Were-Rabbit is, is not a difficult one to solve but that is not really the point of this film. The point of this film is to enjoy the dynamic between Wallace and Gromit and the overall absurdity.
Overall we like this movie! It is nostalgic but it was also just very cute! The calymation is pretty good and there was a lot more adult humor than we expected which delighted us! Wallace was still his clueless self, and poor Gromit is still having to take care of Wallace, but it is amusing.
We definitely recommend this little film! If you are someone that enjoys claymation, animals, and cute, lighthearted kid’s movies, then this movie is absolutely for you!
We give this movie 3 glasses of spiked carrot juice out of 5!
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit Drinking Game
Take a sip anytime:
1. The Wallace and Gromit theme song plays
2. Wallace and Gromit suit up
3. Wallace is clueless
4. Wallace talks about or eats cheese
5. Gromit solves a problem
6. Gromit knits
7. There's a carrot on screen
8. There are rabbits on screen
9. Giant vegetables or fruit on screen
10. Victor talks about killing/hunting
11. You see the were-rabbit
12. There’s an ominous shadow
13. You hear a burp or belch
14. You notice an adult joke in the film
What did you think?? Did you like the movie? Did you hate it!? Do you have suggestions for films we should consider?! Let us know here in the comments and always remember to be safe and drink responsibly!