You have to see it twice to catch all the film’s visual jokes, but you can ignore the simplistic plot the second time around.
By: Bob Brown
Animation has come a long way since Mickey Mouse. Say hello to Rodney Rodent, a more urbane domesticated rat, who resides in London’s Kensington section. Instead of dippy shorts and white gloves, he wears elegant evening clothes for a night out with dollhouse denizens. Welcome to the 21st century.
Rodney is the hero of Aardman Animation’s latest feature, Flushed Away, following its great success with Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Viewers will recognize the Aardman family resemblance. But Aardman’s guiding light behind Wallace and Gromit, Nick Park, appears only in this film’s lengthy list of thank-yous at the very end.
Flushed is directed by David Bowers (The Curse of the Were-Rabbit) and Sam Fell, from a script team headed by Fell and Peter Lord (Chicken Run). Aardman’s trademark clay-mation technique, perfected in the Wallace and Gromit series, is now simulated digitally. We saw a little of this in Were-Rabbit (where a flotilla of bunnies was digitized). This time, figures are completely digital, but in a way that re-creates what they would have looked like had they been movable stop-action figures. Even the nicks on the surface of their plasticine bodies are digitized.
As in Were-Rabbit, the filmmakers keep the focus on a few key characters and a simple plot. Rodney (voiced by Hugh Jackman) is living the comfortable but lonely life of a gilded-cage pet. When his family goes away on vacation, his routine is disrupted by the arrival of Sid (Shane Richie), who pops up through the drain. When Rod tries to fool Sid into thinking the toilet bowl is a Jacuzzi, Sid turns the tables and flushes Rod away.
Tumbling into London’s sewer underworld, there are several classic film references, like Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, and The Wizard of Oz. It’s a self-contained subterranean London of mostly rats. There, Rod falls into the company of Rita (Kate Winslet), who pilots a boat and is being pursued by two rat thugs, an albino rat named Whitey (Bill Nighy) and his diminutive handler Spike (Andy Serkis). This bumbling duo is working for the big boss, Toad (richly voiced by Ian McKellen).
They want a large ruby that Rita has. It’s not clear exactly why, but never mind. The plot takes a new tack when it’s more important that Toad get a unique electrical strap, which connects the main power supply to the sewer floodgates. Rita has snatched it to use as a chic belt. If he gets it back, Toad can drown out the rats so the amphibians can take over. Helping him are the decidedly French frogs, led by super-sleuth Le Frog (Jean Reno). Much of the English humor is at the expense of French culture. In one scene, the frogs are dashing off to chase Rod and Rita, when someone asks, "What about dinner?" "Right," says Le Frog, "Let’s break five hours for dinner."
Many little visual jokes pop up and fly by. You almost have to see the film twice to catch them all (and it wouldn’t be hard you can ignore the simplistic plot the second time around). In Rita’s family houseboat, a kitchen sink plunges through the deck, exposing behind it a large cockroach, who is reading Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.
Throughout the action-packed chase sequences, there is a Greek chorus of leeches, who bob up to sing thematically appropriate pop-songs, or just to screech and bare their teeth. (Every creature has the Nick Park choppers and the beady eyes.) Their stalk-like eyes and slithery movements seem to be patterned after SpongeBob SquarePants’ pet snail, Gary. When they’re fleeing en-mass, the slow-moving, terrified herd makes gooey slime sounds instead of clattering hoofs.
Although this movie is aimed at kids, it has pleasures galore for adults as well. Not the least of these are the many film and pop-culture references and a lush musical score by Harry Gregson-Williams (Kingdom of Heaven, The Chronicles of Narnia). The voice-characterizations are inspired, especially McKellen’s Toad, who has a bloated imperiousness that is frequently deflated when he snares his tongue in zapping flies, and Nighy’s Whitey, who is a lovable dim-bulb. (By the way, even the tiniest creatures are given personalities and voices, including flies, bedbugs and a stubborn barnacle who refuses to be scraped off the hull of Rita’s boat.)
The movie is a lot of fun. Not as deliriously funny, perhaps, as a Wallace and Gromit movie it’s hard to beat a cheese-loving inventor and his ingenious, silent buddy who picks up the pieces. Rodney and Rita are a cute couple, but they’re no Mickey and Minnie. If you don’t mind seeing the names of armies of digital technicians who were employed to make this movie, stay through the credits, which are slithered over by cheeky leeches.
Rated PG for crude humor and some language.

