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Flushed Away (2006)

Director: David Bowers, Sam Fell

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Synopsis

DreamWorks and the animators behind ‘Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ team up for this animated adventure set beneath the streets of London. Aristocratic mouse Roddy St James (voiced by Hugh Jackman) is forced out of his life of luxury as the pet of a well-heeled Kensington family when he is flushed down the toilet into London’s underworld sewer network. His initial horror slowly turns into heroic conviction when he joins plucky mouse Rita (Kate Winslet) and her comrades in their resistance to the tyrannical toad king (Ian McKellan).

Movie review

From Time Out Chicago

We’ve been pretty darn grumpy about most of the computer animation of the last few years, which has mostly featured strings of supposedly clever jokes done in shrill, ugly animation and featuring shameless product plugs (we’re talking to you, Cars). And then there’s Aardman Animation (Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit), the claymation craft studio that has served as a rebuke, reminding all the computer geeks that intelligence doesn’t necessarily equal computational power. So we were nervously hopeful at the prospect of a computer-animated film from the Aardman crew. But would their DIY hand-made aesthetic and their sophisticated but somehow childlike wit mesh with computers? Yes, by God, yes. This tale of spoiled pet mouse Roddy (Jackman) who gets flushed into the sewer and has adventures in the world under London is hilarious. Roddy discovers a whole rat city, which is being menaced by an evil toad (McKellan finding his inner ham). Roddy gets tangled up with Rita (Winslet), a lovely rat in a running feud with the toad. The story is good fun, but the real pleasure here comes in the exuberant inventiveness of the details. There’s a troop of French frog assassins who sport berets and outrageous accents and travel with their own mime. There’s a recurring gag involving snails that goes from chuckle to shooting-soda-out-your-nose funny. Aardman has made it safe to go back to the computer-animated show.

Author: Hank Sartin

Time Out Chicago Issue 88: Nov 2–Nov 8, 2006

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