Flushed Away (2006) August 25, 2007
Posted by gproject in : Recently Viewed , trackbackDirected by: David Bowers & Sam Fell
The third and final feature outing from a collaboration between DreamWorks and Aardman animation, Flushed Away proved to be not quite enough of a success to keep the American studio happy, leaving no choice but for the companies to go their separate ways. Realistically, the two had different interests from the outset; DreamWorks wanting to produce more wholly CG animated flicks, while Aardman wished to maintain their stop-motion clay sensibility. It was these conflicting ideals that finally meshed into this story of rats, toads and adventure, all set in the sewers of London.
Our protagonist is Roddy, an upper class pet mouse whose world is turned upside-down when he is flushed down the toilet by a squatting wild rat named Sid. Determined to find a way back to his home and his comfortable way of life, Roddy elicits the help of Rita, an outgoing scavenger who lives in the sewers with her large, bustling family. But Rita’s help doesn’t come free, and Roddy soon finds himself mixed up in a rivalry between his new friend and the villainous Toad, who wishes to wipe out the rat population and claim ownership of the sewers for himself.
The first interesting point to note is the mix of styles used to create this movie. While previous features Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit had incorporated elements of CG, this is the first Aardman animation to be created entirely in the digital world, although they haven’t entirely succumbed to the limitlessness of the medium. Instead, the classic clay character design has remained, which means plenty of big eyes, curled-over brows and wide mouths populate this world of creatures. Generally, it works quite well, even if there is a distinct difference between doing something in computers and shooting it using real models, you quickly stop thinking about the tools behind the picture.
The reason for making this film in CG was apparently down to the amount of water the story was required to use – a very difficult element to produce in stop-motion. The background and set design, including water, does benefit greatly from the choice of production method and there’s plenty of fine detail that may have been lost on crafting actual models.
Voice acting, a big part of any animated film, is done very well by a cast of mainly British stars including Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Bill Nighy and Andy Serkis. I’m glad Aardman didn’t bow to pressure to include a whole raft of Americans since the film works very well in its London setting, and the voices are chosen perfectly to fit the characters.
The film is also quite funny in parts, which is something that this particular genre often thinks it does very well, without actually achieving it. Sure, it still has its fair share of dud jokes, or gags that are a bit too ‘Simpsons’ in nature, but I found myself enjoying this movie much more than many of its recent US counterparts (Happy Feet [review], Ice Age 2 [review], Shrek 3 [review]) which all failed in the humour department. I really hate to say that the success of this script is down to ‘a British sense of humour’, but unfortunately there’s no denying that this is what makes it rise above the rest. Only when it loses sight of this strength does the movie slip into relying on typical US animated TV-style jokes or stereotypes.
Which, unfortunately, also leads to the film’s biggest drawback: its inherent Britishness. I’m not saying that British productions can’t have success outside of our shores, but Flushed Away contains quite a few jokes and themes (lots of football stuff, for example) that might fall flat on a non-UK audience, if not alienate them slightly from the film. It shouldn’t be a problem, but judging by its box office performance, it obviously is.
For me, this film was quite a pleasant surprise. I’m not keen on the almost overwhelming number of CG animated kids movies that get released these days, plus it’s a market dominated by US productions, with the odd entry such as Valiant (a UK production) proving to be very disappointing. This, on the other hand, is an amusing and exciting tale, told with flair through good direction and decent voice acting. But with DreamWorks going home to their comfortable Shrek franchise, and Aardman set on returning to stop-motion features, it looks as if Flushed Away will forever remain the ugly duckling in a genre full of great-looking, but ultimately vapid, swans.
Comments»
Interesting opinions. I’ve not seen Flushed Away myself but I’ve always had a great appreciation for Aardman’s work, from the plentiful short material they’ve produced right up to their last stop motion feature (Wererabbit), which I loved. I did see trailers for Flushed Away and they kind of… didn’t seem to work very well? I thought that may be a reflection of the film so I left it alone. A lot of their animators were ‘retrained’ to utilise CGI instead of physical models and I’m not sure if this created a hindrance technically because, as much as people like to knock CGI, it does take a long time to really get to grips with it and even longer to master (I’m saying this from personal experience), so perhaps the guys/gals at Aardman had to spend a bit longer than normal with the technical aspects rather than complete focus on the creative side? Anyway, I think I’ll try and check this out at some point - perhaps it’s not as bad as I expected given your views above.