REVIEW | 'Wallace & amp; Gromit' Animation oozes with British humor

The characters come from short films about an Englishman and his dog.
By ROGER MOORE
ORLANDO SENTINEL
It's not clay they're molding for these delightful Nick Park animations of chickens, dogs and a Brit-twit named Wallace. It's gags.
Ingeniously conceived, immaculately constructed and elaborately stretched-out sight-gags. Puns, visual and verbal.
And giggles. Oh my yes, the giggles. Let's not forget those.
Wallace, the daft, cheese-loving English inventor, and his chauffeur, valet and all around Dog Friday, Gromit, are now in their first feature film. "Wallace & amp; Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" is all "Wallace & amp; Gromit" fans could hope for -- a silly and cuddly dab of Silly Putty animation from the folks who gave us "Chicken Run" but who made their reputations doing short films about a daft Englishman and his dog.
Pair's quest
Our intrepid duo are running a rodent removal service in their retro-corner of Olde England -- Anti-Pesto, they call it. They're humane removers of rabbits from gardens. Of course Wallace has an invention or three to help with that.
It's a big deal in a town where the annual "biggest vegetable contest" absorbs dotty old ladies, batty old men, dizzy vicars and the woman who runs it, Lady Tottington, voiced with a fluttery flightiness by Helena Bonham Carter.
She's fending off two pests -- acres of rabbits and her trigger-happy, toupee-sporting upper-class fop of a suitor, Victor. Ralph Fiennes found his funny bone to voice this part.
"Heard you had a spot of rabbit bother, what what?"
Wallace is smitten with the lady and perplexed by the rabbit uprising.
"They must be breeding like ..."
Quick as you can say "I'm crackers about cheese!" Wallace has found a solution -- rabbit rehab. He resolves to use this brain-scrubbing gadget he's been trying out on himself to brainwash the little fellows, teach them to "Just say no -- to carrots, cabbage and cauliflower!"
Naturally, that backfires. Next thing you know, something is burrowing subway-sized tunnels from garden to garden, cleaning the town out like a Winn-Dixie before a hurricane.
The vicar blames the town's fertilizer fetish. That's no mere rabbit, or even a man, committing all that cabbage carnage.
Will Wallace and Gromit -- OK, Gromit, because he's the smart one, forever pulling Wallace's cheese out of the fire -- solve the mystery? Or will Victor have the last shot?
Familiar wit
The humor here is familiar to anybody who watches ancient Britcoms on PBS or BBC America. It's finding what's funny in reliably British "types," those stiff-upper folks for whom "Put the kettle on" is a national mantra. They're dotty hobbyists, manic Miss Marple readers, tinkerers, dog lovers and darned funny in a perfectly G-rated way.
True Gromitheads know there's only one rule in Park's fanciful, clay-coated universe: Don't forget the cheese.