Today’s quick review: Flushed Away. Roddy (Hugh Jackman), a pampered but lonely pet rat, gets flushed down the toilet and into a strange new world: a subterranean rat city in the sewers of London. His only hope of getting back to his home is Rita (Kate Winslet), a tough sewer rat. But when the two run afoul of the Toad (Ian McKellen), a displaced aristocrat, Roddy and Rita must escape from his henchmen if they want to make it to the surface alive.
Flushed Away is a CGI animated family adventure from the studio behind Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. Aardman’s first foray into CGI, Flushed Away borrows heavily from the visual style of the studio’s previous work, but with stunts that would be infeasible in stop motion. The resulting film lacks the charm of its predecessors, but retains a good deal of their sense of humor and creativity.
Flushed Away has an odd relationship with its genre. Entire portions of the film are typical for a kids’ adventure, from its madcap humor to the beats of the plot. Yet individual elements of Flushed Away show care, creativity, and forethought. Its playful attitude and signs of craftsmanship briefly lift it above the norm for its genre before it settles back into its rut.
As an example, the relationship between Roddy and Rita is highly archetypal at a broad level, but its details make it unique. Though pampered, Roddy is not entirely useless, and his singing, cooking, and willingness to help all distance him from the cardboard cutout he could have been. Likewise, Rita not only has a softer side, but an entire family, an unusually detailed approach to her type of character’s development.
To its credit, Flushed Away packs a surprising number of jokes into its one-and-a-half hours, from sight gags and slapstick to wordplay and allusions. Many, if not most, of the jokes are cheap, easy humor, but the volume and variety are great enough that a few are sure to land home. The production quality is decent, albeit with dated CGI, and the talented cast of voice actors includes Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis, and Jean Reno.
Flushed Away does not break the mold, but it embellishes upon it in interesting ways. Watch it when you are in the mood for a decent family comedy with a few nice touches. Most viewers would be better off watching Chicken Run or the various Wallace and Gromit films, stop motion comedies in a similar vein with much more charm, creativity, and character of their own.
6.6 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 6.5 to 7.0 for decent humor held back by conformity to its genre.