Flushed Away (2006)
Released: November 3, 2006
Directors: David Bowers, Sam Fell
*****
Armed with an all-star voice cast, the stop-motion studio behind the Wallace and Gromit adventures and the production studio which brought Shrek to life, Flushed Away was supposed to be a big hit, a film for all ages to laugh at, enjoy and share together. Someone obviously missed that memo in fall,2006, as the story of a well-to-do rat who gets mixed up in a seedy underworld flopped-relatively speaking-at the box office.
In a (relative) spin on The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse tale, Roddy (Hugh Jackman) is literally flushed down the toilet when interloper Spike (Andy Serkis) finds his way to Roddy's Kensington home. Once in the sewers and tunnels under London, Roddy meets up with the vile criminal lord The Toad (Ian McKellen), beautiful Rita (Kate Winslet) and a host of other characters in the search for a ruby from the Queen's crown. A ruby which will put Rita's family on easy street...though, in the end, the story doesn't turn out to be about the jewel at all.
I never thought I'd say this, but if there is one problem in the film, it is the humor. No, it's not stupid, toilet bowl humor; rather, the opposite, most of the time. It's too sophisticated, elegant, highbrow for some of the intended audience. Most of the laughs are derived from other sources. For instance, check out the opening ten minutes or so. Roddy contemplates putting on a yellow and blue costume, quite obviously meant as a tip of the hate to the Wolverine character in X-Men since Jackman played the mutant in the movies. And take another instance later in the film. Hitting some rapids in the sewer, Roddy and Rita play a Humphrey Bogart/Katharine Hepburn duo trying to navigate their boat to the correct tributary. Other films by DreamWorks make an appearance early, yet all these little touches will go over the heads of the kids. All they want to see-and quite rightly so-is the action. Of which, granted, there is much...both high brow and low-er brow.
As an animated film, Flushed Away does what it's supposed to do. And that is make us laugh. The entirety of the film looks very polished and clean, with the story always leading the action. It's not terribly original, yet feels refreshing and vivid. How many times, really, have we seen the supposed object of everyone's desire turn out to be a fake and the real quest to be for something totally different? The writers, of which their are twelve credited in the film, keep the plot moving, never meandering. Sure, it tugs at the heartstrings just a bit when the plot is allowed a moment of exposition though there's never the blunt sense of trying to make us empathetic for the characters, only to move the story along. And that isn't a weakness at all. Rather, it's quite the opposite.
Directors: David Bowers, Sam Fell
*****
Armed with an all-star voice cast, the stop-motion studio behind the Wallace and Gromit adventures and the production studio which brought Shrek to life, Flushed Away was supposed to be a big hit, a film for all ages to laugh at, enjoy and share together. Someone obviously missed that memo in fall,2006, as the story of a well-to-do rat who gets mixed up in a seedy underworld flopped-relatively speaking-at the box office.
In a (relative) spin on The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse tale, Roddy (Hugh Jackman) is literally flushed down the toilet when interloper Spike (Andy Serkis) finds his way to Roddy's Kensington home. Once in the sewers and tunnels under London, Roddy meets up with the vile criminal lord The Toad (Ian McKellen), beautiful Rita (Kate Winslet) and a host of other characters in the search for a ruby from the Queen's crown. A ruby which will put Rita's family on easy street...though, in the end, the story doesn't turn out to be about the jewel at all.
I never thought I'd say this, but if there is one problem in the film, it is the humor. No, it's not stupid, toilet bowl humor; rather, the opposite, most of the time. It's too sophisticated, elegant, highbrow for some of the intended audience. Most of the laughs are derived from other sources. For instance, check out the opening ten minutes or so. Roddy contemplates putting on a yellow and blue costume, quite obviously meant as a tip of the hate to the Wolverine character in X-Men since Jackman played the mutant in the movies. And take another instance later in the film. Hitting some rapids in the sewer, Roddy and Rita play a Humphrey Bogart/Katharine Hepburn duo trying to navigate their boat to the correct tributary. Other films by DreamWorks make an appearance early, yet all these little touches will go over the heads of the kids. All they want to see-and quite rightly so-is the action. Of which, granted, there is much...both high brow and low-er brow.
As an animated film, Flushed Away does what it's supposed to do. And that is make us laugh. The entirety of the film looks very polished and clean, with the story always leading the action. It's not terribly original, yet feels refreshing and vivid. How many times, really, have we seen the supposed object of everyone's desire turn out to be a fake and the real quest to be for something totally different? The writers, of which their are twelve credited in the film, keep the plot moving, never meandering. Sure, it tugs at the heartstrings just a bit when the plot is allowed a moment of exposition though there's never the blunt sense of trying to make us empathetic for the characters, only to move the story along. And that isn't a weakness at all. Rather, it's quite the opposite.
