Flushed Away: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

9/09/2007 Posted by Admin

Swept away

(Originally published 2006)

For some, the new computer-animated movie "Flushed Away" might sound like the logical sequel to Madonna and Guy Ritchie's remake of "Swept Away," in which Madge gave the sort of performance that was so poorly received, it essentially plucked the raison from her d'etre. Recently, she proclaimed she will never act in another movie, a promise she shrewdly has kept--at least for now.

"Flushed Away" comes from directors David Bowers and Sam Fell by way of DreamWorks Animation and Aardman Animations.

The latter is the British outfit behind the Academy Award-winning Wallace & Gromit series. Those films were created using stop-motion clay animation, a look and feel "Flush" strives to capture through computer animation. For the most part, they succeed, though there is a smoothness to the production that does steal away at least some of the crude, hands-on charm for which Aardman is known.

As written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan and Will Davies, "Flushed Away" follows the highs and lows of the high-brow pet mouse Roddy (Hugh Jackman), who is left to his own devices at his owners' Kensington estate when the family goes away for the weekend. For a time, all is well and good for Roddy until the intrusive, abrasive rat Sid (Shane Richie) enters the picture.

Belched loose from the plumbing, Sid turns vicious when he flushes Roddy out of his life so he can take over the estate and at last live the good life. For Roddy, the life he finds underground is actually a city teeming with sauce and color, particularly thanks to some salty, torch-song-singing slugs, who are given to such piercing fits of fright, they steal a good part of the show.

Below ground, Roddy also meets cute with Rita (Kate Winslet), a slinky rat with a fetching attitude who helms the tugboat, the Jammy Dodger. She is Roddy's only hope to help him find his way back to the life he knows at street level, which she agrees to do, though naturally there are complications.

Seething in a subplot is Toad (Ian McKellen, terrific), who wants to drown the inhabitants of this sewer haven so he can call it his own. Since he can't do so without first obtaining a piece of cable Rita uses as a belt (don't ask), Toad has a fight on his webbed hands, with his amusing posse le Frog (Jean Reno), Spike (Andy Sirkis) and Whitey (Bill Nighy) all along for the ride.

Throughout the movie, you can feel the tug and pull of each studio, with the more cliched, dramatic moments coming from DreamWorks, one suspects, while Aardman shoehorns into the story the sort of quietly revealing character moments we've come to expect from them. For audiences, the good news is that the two sensibilities mostly assist the movie, allowing it to achieve a controlled sense of arcane looseness on its way to becoming one of the year's better animated efforts.

Grade: B+

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