Sightlines · reception

How Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was received

2005 · Steve Box · Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit on Sightlines

The arc

An Oscar-winning hit on arrival (it beat Corpse Bride and Howl's Moving Castle for Best Animated Feature), yet its middling US box office helped sour the DreamWorks–Aardman deal — and it's since settled in as a beloved comfort classic rather than a footnote in that fallout.

What’s debated

The perennial W&G debate: can any feature-length outing — even an Oscar winner — really top the perfection of the shorts, with The Wrong Trousers loyalists refusing to concede.

Its footprint

Wallace & Gromit are a British cultural institution — the cheese obsession, Gromit's silent eyebrow-acting — and Were-Rabbit gave the franchise its big-screen monster-movie form, a loving Hammer-horror parody people still quote and cosplay.

Where it stands

A Letterboxd comfort-film staple and the consensus proof that Aardman's handmade plasticine charm could survive the jump to features.

Did you know? Days after the film opened at number one in the US in October 2005, a fire destroyed Aardman's Bristol warehouse, wiping out decades of props and sets from the studio's history — though the Were-Rabbit production materials, held elsewhere, survived.

Named by the director

• King Kong (1933) — Nick Park and Steve Box cited the classic monster-movie tradition, King Kong above all, as the template they were affectionately spoofing.