Running time: 86 minutes
Rating 7 out of 10
Another week, another animated animal movie. This year's roster includes the likes of Open Season, Over The Hedge, Barnyard and Valiant. With the genre in danger of becoming stale, coming up with a fresh take is essential. Being funny helps. Which makes the innovative and hilarious Flushed Away a treat for youngsters and adults alike. The collaboration between DreamWorks and Aardman is the pioneering British animation company's first fully CGI feature film. It utilizes a new program that endeavours to replicate the distinctive stop-action technique the company established its reputation with. It doesn't have the hand-made three-dimensional feel of films like Chicken Run. But neither is it dogged with the sterile precision of CGI.
Being Aardman, Flushed Away is blessed with a very British sensibility, though one that has a more universal appeal than the parochial Valiant. Possessed of a blend of charm, bawdiness, dry wit and slapstick, it's the film's more surreal elements that lend it its engaging originality. Never have slugs been so endearing and comical, not to mention such great singers.
Roddy (Hugh Jackman) is a well-bred mouse who enjoys a privileged, but solitary life in Kensington. When his owners leave home, Roddy is visited by the uncouth punk sewer rat Sid. Roddy's effort to rid himself of his unwelcome guest backfires when he's flushed down the toilet and ends up in the unsalubrious and bustling subterranean world known as Ratropolis. There he meets the spirited Rita (Kate Winslet) who navigates the sewers in her trusty boat while trying to avoid the villainous Toad (Ian McKellan) and his two henchman Spike (Andy Serkis) and Whitey (Bill Nighy) who are after an item she possesses. Initially Roddy is intent on going back to his Kensington home, but slowly he warms to Rita and the attentions of her crazy family.
Flushed Away marks a very promising feature debut for its co-directors David Bowers and Sam Fell, while the team of writers, which includes the veteran pair of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, ensure the visual gags and silly jokes come thick and fast. The star-studded vocal cast is wonderful with Jackman's eloquent timbre lending the posh Roddy the perfect tone while Serkis and Nighy combine hilariously as the thuggish sidekicks. And as if to confirm how amusingly bizarre it all is, the story even includes England reaching the World Cup final.
Kevin Murphy
