November 5, 2006 -- “Flushed Away” is a combined British-American animated film, pairing Aardman Features “Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were Rabbit” and DreamWorks Animation (“Shrek”). The result of their pairing is not quite as good as the best work either studio has done independently. There is little of the whimsy and sharp wit of Aardman, while there is too much of the gross humor that sometimes taints DreamWorks productions.

“Flushed Away” is the story of a high-toned pet, Roddy St. James, a rat, who is taken away from his posh existence and thrown into a subterranean world that is completely foreign to him. Roddy's home is invaded by a sewer rat named Sid. Roddy decides to flush Sid down the toilet to get rid of him, but Sid turns the tables on Roddy and flushes him into the sewer. Roddy, who has never been out of his house, is amazed at the world below, an entire civilization he has never heard of. Eager to get back home, he strikes a bargain with a pretty boat captain, Rita. If she'll take him home, he'll give her jewels from his house.

The two cross paths with an evil frog, however, and he sends his hoodlums after Rita and Roddy. Among the pursuers is the French frog, Le Frog (voice by Jean Reno), who agrees to capture the two, but not before a five-hour dinner. In the end, Roddy must decide whether to stick with his easy life in the home of a rich family, or to go back down into the sewers to rescue his beloved Rita. The story, and characters are solid. The film also shows a lot of visual imagination with the elaborate subterranean world. There are some very funny jokes in the film, and a little of that wry Aardman humor, like the image of a bug reading a copy of Franz Kafka's book, The Metamorphosis. Perhaps the most charming characters of all are a group of singing slugs that act like a Greek Chorus, singing songs which comment on plot developments.

While the film is funny at times, it is not as polished as most Aardman films, and it is not as funny as the better Dreamworks films, either. It is a little too fond of visual jokes based on slime, goo, maggots and the like. It is too much, perhaps, to expect the screenwriters to get their minds out of the sewer, give the nature of this story. It would have been much more pleasant if it had not been quite so gross. The film does retain the look of an Aardman film, if not the humor. The style, the facial expressions, the settings, are all very familiar to Wallace and Gromit fans. This marriage of American and British styles of humor, however, doesn't quite hit the mark. This film rates a C+.

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Copyright © 2006 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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