FLUSHED AWAY is the latest collaboration between DreamWorks and Aardman, the studio that created WALLACE & GROMIT, however this is the first time Aardman has made a CG feature, having used clay stop-motion animation in the past.
Roddy (Hugh Jackman, X-MEN series) is a posh pet rat that lives in Kensington. One day while his owners are away, a fat, disgusting sewer rat named, Sid (Shame Richie) comes bubbling up from the kitchen sink. Events transpire which lead to Roddy getting flushed down the toilet. Now in the sewer, Roddy discovers an entire city of rats. In an effort to get back home, he teams with the cockney boat captain Rita (Kate Winslet, TITANIC), who Roddy accidentally creates a great deal of trouble for with the gangster The Toad (Ian McKellen, GODS & MONSTERS) and his rat thugs Spike (Andy Serkis, KING KONG) and Whitey (Bill Nighy, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST). As Roddy and Rita make their way to the above world, The Frog sends assassins after them to recover a stolen item that is key to his devilish master plan. At one point he has to call in the services of his French cousin Le Frog (Jean Reno, THE PROFESSIONAL) and his kung-fu henchmen to hunt down his missing power cable.
The film works best when it’s dealing with the internal conflict of Roddy, who begins questioning whether he even wants to go back to his privileged, yet lonely old life. We care about the characters enough and the motivations of Roddy and Rita mesh well. However, the film does lose some punch in its external conflict when it switches the object of Toad’s and Rita’s desire from the mutual ruby to The Toad only wanting the missing cable back, which Rita and Roddy don’t really need. If Rita and Roddy needed the cable to complete their mission as much as The Toad needed it then the conflict would have been greater. As Hitchcock coined this object of desire — the McGuffin — the conflict is always more dramatically powerful if both the antagonist(s) and villain(s) need the object to succeed. However, Roddy and Rita’s desire to keep it from The Toad so he can’t fulfill his dastardly deed adds enough tension to make the conflict work.
The humor of the film combines typical burp and groin jokes geared toward the kid audience, but also adds some nicely timed gags and witty pop culture riffs for the adults in the crowd. There’s even a moment when the film seems to be going in a tired cliché direction, but find a way to twist it for a laugh. A main part of the film’s success is in the great voice cast.
Jackman and Winslet actually do voices, which allows us to believe in the characters more. We don’t keep saying to ourselves — hey, it’s Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet as rats. McKellen too has fun with his role, slowly unhinging the villain as the film proceeds. However, a good deal of the laughs come from the musical interludes of a chorus of slugs. The song choices are perfectly timed with genuine wit instead of relying on kitschiness for an easy laugh that will feel dated in a few years. FLUSHED AWAY is a charmingly fun family film that utilizes animation well in creating laughs out of great timing and performance.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
