Creator Nick Park ("Chicken Run," "Creature Comforts") and crew once again stretch the limits of clay in the newly-released, "Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit," with audiences giggling throughout the entire film.

Beloved characters Wallace, a cheese-loving inventor, and his ever-faithful and silent though expressive (and much smarter) pooch Gromit are humane pest control experts in a town where the annual giant vegetable competition is the local passion. A few days before the event, local gardens are ravaged by what seems to be an overgrown and ravenous rabbit with a penchant for the very produce to be shown at the competition, and the townspeople turn to our intrepid heroes for help.

Peter Sallis (Wallace’s voice) is joined by Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Feinnes as the softhearted Lady Tottingham and her overeager suitor Victor Quartermaine, to create a rather uneven love triangle that pokes fun at stereotypical British pomp and circumstance.

The animation is almost entirely stop-action, and in an age where CG animation is more or less the rule, the "novelty" of clay animation still manages to boggle the mind with its 3D effectiveness. "Wallace & Gromit" is warmer, obviously more solid, and by virtue of being clay, or more likely plasticine, is funnier simply because it can pull off jokes within the obvious physical limitations of stop-action animation. There’s something to the lack of smoothness inherent in CG animation has that makes it charming, despite the fact that this film took about five years to make up the 85-minute running time.

"Wallace & Gromit" even manages to take the humor up another level from cartoonish to slightly naughty at times, earning laughs not just from the kids but their parents as well. Sophisticated inside jokes call out to classics in the thriller genre, like "King Kong," American Werewolf in London," and "Frankenstein." One of the best scenes in the film has absolutely no dialogue and involves an exchange between Gromit and his evil counterpart hound at the height of the excitement. The only voices were the chuckles in the audience.

So stacked is this film with puns, inside jokes, and sight gags, that I suspect seeing it once is not enough. Rated G.

COURTESY PHOTO

Caption: Gromit and Wallace sit down to breakfast to plot their next move in "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit."