Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

Cheerful big-screen adventure for the titular twosome, who find themselves beset by a threat much larger (in multiple senses of the word) than a kleptomaniacal penguin or a malicious robot dog. This has a welcome sense of the laid-back that makes its action sequences all the more thrilling (or maybe it just makes a nice contrast to the frenetic snark that seems to dominate American kidflicks these days), and in the British tradition it's also more than willing to poke fun at itself (note the perfect timing of the "do you have a quarter?" gag). There's also some surprisingly ribald humor that snuck under the general-audience wire ("May Contain Nuts"???), but again in the British tradition it's all cheeky and harmless rather than smutty. The meticulous design, too, is handsome and charming (again, it's all about the tactility of stop-motion). It's encouraging to see this doing modestly impressive business at the box office, but this should really be a bigger hit. Maybe the rampant puns scared people away (this is even worse than Corpse Bride in that respect).

Grade: B+