Flushed Away
Aardman Animation is best known for their amazing and innovative claymation work, such as Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit films. Flushed Away was done with computer animation instead of painstaking stop motion, largely due to the practical concerns of animating with so much water, but it loses none of the fabled Aardman plasticene soul we’ve come to expect. Astoundingly, the characters here occasionally seemed less smooth and fluid than their clay work, but no matter. All the imaginative mahic is there, but with new freedom of movement and set construction. Letting loose that creative team with that toolkit means the sky is the limit.
First of all, I have to applaud the casting. The list of names reads like the biggest, most anticipated art film of the year, but no one is cast for their name so much as their perfect talent for the job. Hugh Jackman even gets a little chance to sing! (Tony Awards viewers already know what a quadruple threat he is!) Inspired voices like Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis, and Jean Reno make for great performances rich with character, as Aardman always delivers. Despite the big names (for adults), the movie is really just a great story.
Aardman has always been scrupulously detailed and gorgeously creative with their scenic and costume design, and this film is no different. Visual gags soar by but do not distract, and the feel of the London sewer is as tangible as if it had been molded of clay. So many years of Aardman literally being up to their elbows in the details of look and movement had served this digital team well. I do hope they do not abandon the plasticene for the digital, but I have to admit, Aardmaan would make the transition painless. This movie is a serious competitor with the strongest Pixar product, the only other group out there in Aardman’s class. Frankly, if asked, I would vote for Flushed Away over Cars this year for Best Animated Feature. Yeah, I said it.
The movie is a fish out of water comedy (or, a rat in water) about a lonely, rich rat who finds himself in the sewers, embroiled in a delicious battle against Sir Ian McKellen’s Toad and Kate Winslet as Rita, a fetching rat sailor. Flushed Away has elements of Bond films, Indiana Jones, and even Romancing the Stone. Truth be told, this movie wades into some of the great movie clich�s and makes them new again, tweaking the cinematic conventions for a new generation while making a delightfully witty comedy for the older set. It’s not derivative, and it’s not an homage, but it owes a happy debt to many, many movies.
The whole film is a gleeful rom through a watery, yet entirely plausible, hidden world. It’s charming and absurd and silly and a real pleasure, just as only Aardman can deliver. Go see it, I don’t care if you don’t have kids. You don’t need them for this.
MPAA Rating PG
Release date 11/3/06
Time in minutes 84
Director Sam Fell, David Bowers
Studio Dreamworks
