Animated News intern Ryan Bryant presents us with his full-length review of DreamWorks Animation/Aardman’s CGI-animated film Flushed Away which debuts in theaters today:
Ever stare at a toilet and wonder where it might lead? Ever get hypnotized by the soothing swirling motion of a flush? (Me neither… I swear.) Most importantly: Do you ever dive into a toilet and find yourself sloshing down the coolest water slide that your local water park or stop-motion animation studio ever dreamed of creating?
Well, unfortunately, this experience would not have been possible in real life, or, more specifically, in stop-motion. The complexity of the water effects and the breathtakingly detailed environments of this film would never have been achievable using models and frame-by-frame photography. The immensely clever Flushed Away is the very first CG animated film to be produced by Aardman Studios in conjunction with DreamWorks Animation.
As I’m sure you know, Aardman is the company responsible for the terrific Chicken Run, the brilliant British TV series Creature Comforts (soon to be playing on a cable station near you) and, last but not least, the hysterical Wallace & Gromit shorts including my personal fave, The Wrong Trousers. Although Flushed Away is animated in CG, the characters still retain that classic Aardman sensibility and the stop-motion look and feel which adds an inherent charm (and weight) to their design and movements (ok, that was my last toilet joke…I promise.)
Flushed tells the story of Roddy (voiced by the always appealing Hugh Jackman), a prim & pampered rat living in the lap of luxury in a British family’s posh residence. Jackman is in rom-com charmer mode, with a touch of Woody Allen nebbish, as opposed to his recent return to the dark and brooding Wolverine in the X-Men series or his obsessed con-man in the current live-action hit, The Prestige. When the owners of the house (also Roddy’s caretakers) leave for vacation, he is left alone with nothing but the companionship of a kids’ non-animated Barbie doll (no Swan Lake here) and other choice toys to keep him occupied.
A sewer rat named Sid (voiced by the terrific Shane Richie) breaks his way into Roddy’s pad, and the two guys mix like vodka and prune juice. This conflict-fueled relationship (and even the two silhouettes) immediately reminded me of the other European rat movie – the characters we met in last summer’s teaser trailer for Pixar’s sure-to-be mega-hit, Ratatouille. Funny how when it rains, it pours. A Bug’s Life/Antz, Madagascar/The Wild, Over The Hedge/Open Season, Happy Feet/Surf’s Up – we all know the trend.
Sid flushes his new friend down the loo, and thus begins Roddy’s journey to find his way back home. Inside the sewers, Roddy encounters a wide variety of bottom feeders (my last one . . . I promise!) including evil frogs, toads, singing slugs, and a spunky female rat named Rita (voiced by Kate Winslet). Winslet steals the show in the current film, Little Children, with a heartbreakingly emotional performance. Her voicework here is decent, if not a little underwhelming. Although, in fairness to her, the role didn’t demand much.
My two favorite elements of Flushed Away came in very different packages. The first is the aforementioned slug characters. Like the Oompa Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, these cute little slugs (who I expected to hate from their over-use in the trailer, TV commercials and other marketing materials) stole every scene in which they appeared. I don’t want to spoil their song-choices by revealing too many details, but I will say this: I am normally the first person to openly gag at the CG animated movie convention of characters breaking into song at the end of a film or in noticeable lulls in the plot. But in Flushed Away, these ugly slugs won me over very early on, and I couldn’t get enough of them. I’m sure I will be forced to eat these words, and some (more) cynical critics will shout that these maggots are the Ewoks of Aardman, but I thought they were darn funny.
The other part of the film that really stood out for me is a fantastic scene that takes place at Rita’s family’s run-down floating home. Roddy is shoved into the middle of a long dinner table populated by a diverse batch of Rita’s siblings. In a movie filled with a constant flow of inventive action and clever writing, the heart of this scene shined through in a way that I haven’t felt at an animated movie in years.
Animated comedies (with wall-to-wall jokes, gags and prat-falls) are a dime-a-dozen nowadays, but an emotional core to one of these modern films is a rare achievement. Flushed Away isn’t a perfect movie, but when it works, it reaches heights that the best recent CG hits haven’t even gone near.
(Christian’s notes: Look for references in Flushed Away to Madagascar, Chicken Run, James Bond, Toy Story, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Caddyshack, Star Wars, Mary Poppins, Superman, Batman, X-Men, Lady and the Tramp, and more.)
