A 24-carrot spectacle

The great merit of Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit is that they are quintessentially English. The danger, once Dreamworks got hold of them for their first feature, was that their pawky humour and not-quite-cuddly lovability might somehow be debilitated.

Happily, there is only the merest trace of the movie having been made with the American box-office in mind. That trace lies in the busy attempts to fill the screen with as much spectacle as character.

Doubtless the Hollywood suits were satisfied with the action sequences, but they are never as memorable as the quiet patches in which Wallace and his guardian hound pursue the intricacies of ordinary life, such as washing and putting their clothes on, with the eccentricity that goes with Wallace's inventor status. Enjoyable, too, are the knowing nods to horror films, including a King Kong pastiche, as the tale unfolds.

W and G run a firm called Anti-Pesto, which is charged with preventing Lady Tottingham's annual giant vegetable fete falling prey to a plague of rabbits. Our heroes are not into blood sports, so poisoning or shooting is out.

There is, instead, simply the humane Bun-Vac, which works by sucking the vermin out of their holes and into a giant tube. These are subsequently fed and held captive away from the prize veggies. A subsidiary Mind-o-matic machine, intended to brainwash the bunnies into disliking their carrots, unfortunately doesn't work.

The villains are two. The first is nasty Lord Victor (voiced by Ralph Fiennes), a man inclined to use his gun on the wildlife and who is after Lady T (Helena Bonham Carter) and her money. The second is the Were-Rabbit, a murderer of giant melons, who wears a red polka dot tie.

American audiences appear to love the film. I suspect this is because it is defiantly British - unlike other animations, Shrek and Madagascar - and recognisably so, with all the voices done by British actors. While, on occasion, it looks like several W and G shorts stitched together, and the plot sometimes loses its way, this is, all told, a splendid effort from Park and co-director Steve Box.

Their affection for their creations is obvious yet they manage to push well past sentimentality with humour that the Pythons would identify as their own.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit
Cert: U