Rats Off To Ya!
My apologies. I usually try to use a movie line as the subject when I post these things, but while I was watching Flushed Away last night, I was having such a good time I completely forgot to write down any quotes. The first computer-animated feature from Aardman Animations, Flushed Away proves that while stop motion is Aardman's bread and butter, it's not the only trick up their sleeve.
Directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell with a virtual army of writers and animators behind them, the film stars Hugh Jackman's voice as a pampered pet rat in posh Kensington who gets flushed down the loo into the sewers by an interloper and has to enlist the help of tomboyish Kate Winslet to get back. This is no easy task, however, since they're up against evil toad Ian McKellen, his French cousin Jean Reno (and his band of ninja frogs), and dim-witted henchrats Bill Nighy (as a hulking albino rat) and Andy Serkis.
The story moves fast, as these things tend to do, and some scenes are absolutely crammed with tiny details, which is also par for the course. If there's one area where it slips into the kind of thing more associated with DreamWorks than Aardman, it's in the frequent inclusion of pop culture references and songs to comment on the action (although the Batman gag did get one of the biggest laughs in the whole film). Even so, it retains its essentially British character and Aardman's refusal to pander to American audiences is always refreshing.
The only real downside to seeing a film like this in the theaters is I've now been exposed to the trailers for about half a dozen other animated films that will be coming out over the next year or so and, with the exception of Pixar's Ratatouille, not a single one of them looked the least bit promising. (Then again, Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie was more of a joke trailer than anything else, so it's probably best to reserve judgement on that one.) Suffice to say, if it features computer animated penguins, I will be skipping it. And did they really insert an apostrophe into the title of Happily N'Ever After? What, are they high? Come on, people!