Slow starts...hilarious finish...

Okay, so I at one point in the first third of the movie, my wife had to lean over and poke me to stop me from snoring, but it'd been a late night last night.

Went with the wife and mother-in-law (birthday weekend for both) to see Wallce and Grommit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit down in Newport after a lunch from the the hofbrauhaus. I'd seen a number of Wallace and Grommit films before and enjoyed most all of them - not spectacular, but cute and entertaining. This film started out worse - slow pacing at the beginning - but ended up way better than any of its predecessors.

The story opens slowly with W&G taking care of the local vegetable growers from some of the cuter, more personable rabbits seen in movies in a long time. Wallace's inventions are taken at face value here as it's a long-established trait from the previous films and shorts, and the film doesn't really kick into high gear until - as is typical - one of his inventions goes astray, creating a were-rabbit that terrorizes the townfloks.

Once the were-rabbit makes his first shadowy appearances, the movies shifts into high gear with homages to The Fly, King Kong, Frankenstein, The Exorcist, The Matrix, and even Strangers on a Train. The humor turns a little broader with some of the baudiest jokes I've seen in an Ardman production - though they all appeared to go right over the heads of the children in the audiences. The action got livelier, and the scares got much scarier - necessitating a trip to the hallway for a couple of the younger theater-goers (I'd steer clear for any kids younger than five or six, depending on your kid).

All in all, the movie left me with a great feeling and saw adults and children in the theater trading hearty, loud laughs - sometimes at the same time, sometimes not. It's a great movie - and the beginning's probably engaging enough for the youngsters to grab onto more quickly than I did.

One of the best kids' movies I've seen this year, and one of the funniest two-thirds of a movie I've seen in a long time.

(Karlen concurs, and my mother-in-law absolutely loved it.)