Dir.
David Bowers and Sam Fell, UK/US, 2006, 84 mins
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Sir Ian McKellen, Jean
Reno, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis, Shane Ritchie
Review by Matthew Rodgers
Just around every
cinematic U-bend these days there appears to be another
CGI blockage waiting to be relieved on an audience which
is losing interest fast. The majority of them are being
flushed back from whence they came – Barnyard, The Ant Bully – but every so
often we get a floater that refuses to go without a fight,
in this case that is Aardman animations first foray into
the world of the pixelated ‘toon, Flushed Away.
Roddy the domesticated rat (Jackman)
lives in the posh London borough of Kensington and has
a lifestyle that would make Kate Moss look positively dishevelled.
He drives his own car, gets overfed and has countless friends
in the form of plastic dolls, but as with all ‘toons
with a moral he suffers from a single affliction that must
be resolved by the end of the film, he is lonely.
Enter Sid (Ritchie), the sewer rat who gatecrashes the tranquillity
and is everything that Roddy isn't. He is uncouth, slovenly,
and has a stomach that hangs over his jeans, but when a plan
to dispose of him by giving him a whirl in the Jacuzzi/Toilet
backfires it's our reluctant hero who is flushed down into
an underground metropolis inhabited by a menagerie of creatures;
including Sir Ian's thunderous 'The Toad', Winslet's rough
round the edge rat Rita, and a posse of harmonic slugs.
Flushed away requires a little patience, which is a gamble
considering the target audience because it takes a while
to get going. The opening scenes are devoid of any real humour
or originality as Roddy swans around his owners pad establishing
that there is very little to like about him. Maybe it was
a chance for the claymation animators to play with their
new toys (assisted by DreamWorks).
It's a welcome relief then that as soon as Roddy hits the
sewers the pace cranks up a few notches to become a series
of extended chase scenes that would even have the supremacy
that is is Jason Bourne sweating. It's only then that the
charm, so often associated with Aardman characters, begins
to break through the sheen.
In spite of deciding to step up to
the CGI plate, Aardman make the sensible decision of rendering
their characters with the same aesthetics as their plasticine
creations, so there are slight abrasions on the features
and the facial expressions – mouths in particular – are reminiscent
of Wallace & Gromit.
Another of Aardman's strengths is that they have a knack
of finding the most perfect voices for their features (think
Helena Bonham Carter in Curse of the Were-rabbit) and Flushed
Away is no different. Roddy could have been voiced by just
about anybody but Jackman injects some of his theatrical
roots into the character, even getting the chance to exercise
those Tony Award winning lungs to good effect. Sir Ian has
a lot of fun in pantomime dame mode as the magnificently
over-the-top villain. All this and Reno giving his best performance
in years as the superbly animated 'Le Frog' give you have
enough jokes to punctuate the unrelenting pace.
However, if there is one reason to enter the stench-ridden
environment of another CGI cartoon it is the cacophony of
comedic singing from the slugs. They are a rival to The Wrong
Trouser's sinister penguin for scene-stealing, bit-part players
and they would elicit a laugh with their every appearance.
Flushed Away is by no means a masterpiece and registers
below the PIXAR benchmark, but it is sporadically a hilarious
and successful combination of two creative forces in Aardman
and DreamWorks that are still intent on maintaining some
of the forgotten values of animation. |
