'Flushed' Cartoon Draws McKellen, Serkis
McKellen and Serkis are lending their voices to "Flushed Away," a DreamWorks cartoon comedy that centers on a pampered British rat who accidentally gets flushed from his posh penthouse flat into the slimy London sewers. DreamWorks is partnered on the project with stop-motion animation powerhouse Aardman Animation, the British company behind "Wallace and Gromit."
Hollywood Reporter, August 26

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If this is Aardman, then I assume this will be claymation, but the word "draws" in the headline leads me to wonder if maybe this particular cartoon will be in a different format -- does the headline writer know something that is not spelled out in the story?

What can I say besides WOO HOO!!!

I expected some critics would like this movie, or give it the benefit of the doubt (I didn't, even though it did make me laugh several times). But opening my morning paper to see it described as"brilliant"? Uh, maybe I'll reevaluate my opinion upward in the future, knowing not to expect much of a story the second time around, but I don't ever see myself calling this movie brilliant. Inventive in spots, yes. But the whole thing just peters out. I couldn't have cared less about the characters.

But I did laugh.

Huh, I think my review turned out as positive as it did because it did the OPPOSITE of peter out, from where I sat; I thought the film had an awkward, fitful start, but somewhere around the halfway point it hid its stride and kept getting better and loonier. And I wanted to kiss the film after that scene with the cell phone and the mime, which gave me one of the best laughs I've had in ages.

Yeah, that scene was very funny. "Flushed Away" has lots of funny scenes. But I was thinking, while watching it, of a friend who, having seen "Shark Tale" a while back, ranted to me about how all Dreamworks animated flicks were full of wacky "sidekick" characters and quick one-liners, which substitute for an actual story.

I haven't seen enough of Dreamworks' animated titles to know if this is true, but I suspect there's something to it. "Flushed Away" had that feeling to me -- hilarious singing slugs, the wacky Toad, an outrageous Le Frog. But what the heck was the story about? A mouse meets another mouse (or rat -- I couldn't tell what Rita was supposed to be) who's protecting a jewel that has some (unexplained?) connection to her father, but is really [spoiler]just made of glass[/spoiler]. And then, once the jewel is out of the picture, Toad needs a [spoiler]cable[/spoiler] to effect some plot to [spoiler]wipe out all the rodents[/spoiler]. And then it ends with Roddy [spoiler]giving Rita an actual ruby[/spoiler]. But who owned that [spoiler]ruby[/spoiler], and assuming it was a family member's, what kind of message is that to send to the little tikes in the audience?

Even if there's an obvious explanation for the jewel, getting to that point was tiresome. You can put all the sly visual references into a film that you want to put into it, and wink at the audience. But if the audience has lost interest in the story, what's the point?

I recognize that those humorous moments, of which there were several, might make for a more enjoyable second viewing, but for now, I just can't get too excited about this movie.

Wow, I mentioned Shark Tale in my own review as well, and I've seen at least one other person make that comparison. Thing is, I fell asleep during Shark Tale, but not here.

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Peter's review is spot on. It gets 3 stars and a B from me.

The Shark Tale comparison is interesting, though (and I say this as one who enjoyed Shark Tale more than most, and enjoyed this film also) to me the more apt comparison is Robots: a constant string of visually inventive, absurdist throwaway gags in a plot in which a rather bland hero leaves home for the first time and arrives (in a roller-coaster action scene) in the big city, where he runs afoul of a nefarious villain who's scheming against the whole community, teams up with a competent, sophisticated love interest who likewise crosses the villain, and winds up saving the day in a big action scene.

The whole film actually felt to me rather like a Blue Sky production, long on wacky humor and action and short on characterization and plot. But the humor and invention are sustained enough to make it worthwhile for me.

SDG wrote:
: Peter's review is spot on.

Gawrsh, I'm gonna blush now. (Partly cuz I wrote that review in something of a rush, and can think of a few things I'd probably tweak now if I could.)

: The Shark Tale comparison is interesting, though . . . to me the more apt comparison is Robots . . .

I actually thought of that, too -- in fact, I thought specifically of your comments regarding the cleverness with which this parallel world was created -- though I didn't think it through to the level that you did!

Incidentally, I also found myself thinking of The Emperor's New Groove -- where the protagonist is cast out of his home of pleasures into a wild and chaotic outside world, and he ultimately finds meaning through his encounter with a happily large (or at least growing!) family.

: The whole film actually felt to me rather like a Blue Sky production, long on wacky humor and action and
: short on characterization and plot.

I could see that. But the non-stop punning definitely put it in Aardman territory, for me (and the non-stop pop culture references kept BOTH DreamWorks AND Aardman in mind). Have you ever read this essay on Chicken Run by Crystal Downing?:

Chicken Run, in fact, self-consciously spectacularizes its "pastiche" with numerous "quotations" of classic film texts throughout its narrative. The Great Escape (1963) has a large presence in the film, its music (or something very much like it) accompanying Ginger on one of her escape attempts; then, during solitary confinement, she bounces a brussels sprout against the wall of her coal bin the same way Steve McQueen in The Great Escape bounced a baseball during his confinement. Meetings to plan the great escape are held in Hut 17, obviously alluding to another World War II prison movie, Stalag 17 (1953). As the chickens turn Hut 17 into their makeshift airplane, one can't help thinking of Jimmy Stewart et al. resurrecting the plane in Flight of the Phoenix (1966); in Chicken Run, however, the engineer behind the project, a hen named Mac, uses the same Scottish brogue as Scotty, the engineer in Star Trek, eventually speaking his familiar words "We're giving it all she's got," and referring to Mrs. Tweedy as a "Klingon." Many other movies and TV shows are similarly "quoted" in the course of the film.

Though many films contain allusions to earlier works, the sense of postmodern pastiche in Chicken Run is reinforced not only by its allusive excess but also through its emphatic employment of verbal cliches. The second time I saw the film, I counted no less than 34 cliches (in 90 minutes!), from chicken puns -- "Birds of a feather flock together" and "What kind of crazy chick are you?" -- to banal motivational phrases: "Where there's a will there's a way" and "Good things come to those who wait." While many films are filled with cliches simply by virtue of lazy writing, Chicken Run is quite obviously conscious of its "already written" nature, ending the film with that most famous of all cliches as two mice earnestly discuss which came first, the chicken or the egg.

So too Chicken Run is self-conscious about its happy ending, undercutting it with subtle irony. As the camera zooms in on the Poultisocracy at the end of the film, we see a sign that once read "Bird Sanctuary"; the word "Bird" has been crossed out and replaced with the misspelled "Chikin." Where did all the birds go? The chickens, we infer, had to displace other inhabitants to achive their utopia, much as those who escaped oppression in Europe by settling along the Susquehanna displaced the Native Americans.

Inspired by Downing, perhaps, I ended up jotting down some of the puns and cliches as they came, only one of which I think I actually quoted in my review, e.g.:

"You thought you could give us the slip!" (immediately after saying this, he slips)
"The booty's in the booty."
"Smashing."
"Ice them both!"
"Freeze!"
"Pardon me, my fly's undone."
"Bingo!" "Scrabble!"
"To the Ratmobile!"
"Don't let the bedbugs bite."
"Feeling a little tongue-tied?"
"Wave!"

For whatever that's all worth.

Heh, I did that just now on the fly... originally I hadn't thought it through to that level either. You know how it is when you write something down, you discover there's more to be said than you initially thought.

Ah, nice. But there of course I'm going to give all the credit to Emperor's New Groove for [a] really being an out-and-out morality tale about moral transformation and [b] making the characters and relationships of the happily growing family real and attractive.

Yes, and what is fast becoming another Aardman trademark, the gag in which seemingly nondiagetic sound is suddenly given a diagetic rationale. They really worked that one a lot in this film, and they'd already used it a number of times in Curse of the Wererabbit (as evidenced by the fact that, coming out of the theater, when I made the observation about diagetic and non-diagetic sound, my eight-year-old David knew what I was talking about).

Yes, I thought that one could have been much more effectively subtle as a double entendre: "Ah, the booty!" Give the audience some credit!

Not much to add beyond my 3 star (and a strong three stars at that) rating.

Except this. For some reason where we all took issue with Shrek's more questionable even potty humor, I didn't have a problem with it here. I suppose, in part, because it was appropriate to the context and setting. But even more than that, it's like the jokes were offensive to the main charcater. The straight man made it work.

Somehow, in this film the farts had heart.

My review.

Best description ever: "...a sequence of extended crotch trauma humor." Good job, SDG.

Dale

Thanks! I'm quite fond of the "murine with an 'm'" line myself. And while Rita's character has widely been compared (including in the production notes) to one of Harrison Ford's archetypal action heroes (Indiana Jones or Han Solo), I'm rather pleased with my Lara Croft analogy, which gets both her gender and her (prominently displayed) nationality into the image.

From Jeff's Film Forum column: Adam R. Holz (Plugged In) compares the film to a "Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes cartoons of yesteryear. Replace 3-D computer-generated images with hand-drawn caricatures, tone down the modern insults, insert a bit more smoking and drinking, and this story could have been told 50 years ago."

Tone down the modern insults? Surely he can't mean that Looney Tunes cartoons went lighter on the insults? Perhaps he just means that the insults are too "modern" and would be more old-fashioned.