The tagline on the posters for Flushed Away promote this as "From the creators of Shrek and Madagascar." Wrong. This is an Aardman movie and, despite some story meddling from DreamWorks, it's a good 'un.
Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman) is a lonely, pampered mouse living in Kensington. He has everything but companionship. However, when sloppy Sid (Shane Richie) spews from the sewers, an appalled Roddy tries to send him right back down again. Unfortunately, it's Roddy who ends up getting flushed down into Ratropolis, the rodent city in London's sewers.
There, he finds himself caught in the machinations of the evil Toad (a scenery-chewing Ian McKellen), who wants to destroy Ratropolis by flooding it during the World Cup final. To accomplish this, he has the assistance of his bumbling heavies Spike (Lord of the Rings' Andy Serkis) and Whitey (Shaun of the Dead's Bill Nighy). When they fail in their mission, Toad calls on his cousin Le Frog (Jean Reno), and his fearsome team of frog ninjas (French, naturellement).
Because so much of Flushed Away took place in and around water, Aardman decided to make this a CG film, as opposed to their usual claymation. The advantage of CG is that it took the studio a year to make the film, as opposed to Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which took five years. The downside is that it's Aardman's first CG flick, and it shows. Although Aardman tried their best to make Flushed Away resemble their previous films, the CG imagery makes the film look a lot like the competition. Aardman needs to work with the medium a bit more if they're going to compete with the big boys.
Another major problem with Flushed Away is the overbearing physical comedy . Roddy trips, touches, steps on or breaks things (always at the most inopportune moments), and enough already with the crotch shots! Also, the use of the Dandy Warhols' "Bohemian Like You" during a chase scene didn't work. After several minutes, I started to lose interest.
However, there are plenty of laughs in the margins, thanks to some inspired visuals, and a Greek Chorus of singing slugs, who steal nearly every scene they're in. This is another movie where it pays to see it again: there are tiny jokes on the side which many viewers will miss the first time around.
The voice cast is top-notch: Jackman is almost unrecognizable to his X-Men fans, Kate Winslet does the best she can as the obligatory love interest, and Nighy, Serkis and Reno have a lot of fun with their characters.
Yes, Flushed Away is not as good as Aardman's previous offerings. But Aardman's worst is still better than most animated family films out this year. And, considering that this may be the last Aardman movie getting North American distribution for quite some time, Flushed Away deserves your dollars, even if it's just to show DreamWorks how idiotic they were to mess with a good thing. A solid 7 out of 10.
Trailers with Flushed Away include previews from Arthur and the Invisibles, Charlotte's Web, Deck the Halls, and Bee Movie.
