Flushed Away

There is plenty of material to update this blog with after my week off. In the next few days you can expect assorted entertainment news updates as well as a (very) summarised report of events over the holidays, with some pics maybe.

Paul and I didn’t get to watch any new films during the past week but I realise now I didn’t post up my review for Flushed Away, from the week of the 18th Dec. So here it is…

Flushed Away is the latest animated film from Aardman Studios, the same team behind Chicken Run and the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit TV series and film. While all these projects are stop-motion claymation, Flushed Away is CGI, but developed with software to exactly replicate the stop-motion experience, complete with dropped frames and occasional finger-marks on characters.

Flushed Away focuses on the adventures of pampered pet rat Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman) when he is flushed down into English sewers and emerges in the rodent equivalent of Piccadilly Circus under London.

Probably the biggest selling point of Flushed Away is its imaginative depiction of this mini London. Everyday objects from our world get novel uses. Socks are sleeping bags, tyres form part of the heroine’s boat, and bath toy rubber ducks are the equivalent of dinghies. At times it is more fun recognising objects, and playing spot the movie in-joke than actually following the film’s plot.

And plot is Flushed Away’s biggest drawback. For all the inventiveness of the film’s world, and the engaging fun characters (voiced by the likes of Kate Winslet, Ian McKellan and Jean Reno), the events of the film are predictable to the extreme.

So Flushed Away has its amusing moments, but it’s pretty forgettable and lacks the magic and zing of Aardman’s earlier cinematic products. I much preferred Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit. If Flushed Away tickled your fancy, and you haven’t seen either of these films, I highly recommend them for their technical wizardy, heart, imagination, and off-kilter British humour: ‘I don’t want to be a pie; I don’t like gravy!’

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