Review: Flushed Away

UK release date: 1st December

The first computer-animated feature from the Aardman brigade successfully replicates their Wallace & Gromit claymation aesthetic with convincing and entertaining (if less charming) results.

Hugh Jackman provides the voice of Roddy St James, a posh Kensington pet mouse who is flushed down the toilet into a vast rodent metropolis — a detailed mini-London constructed from rubbish. There he teams up with a streetwise rat (Kate Winslet) to foil the plans of a villainous toad (Ian McKellen) to flood the sewer city during half-time of the World Cup final. And along the way, Roddy finds genuine companionship for the first time.

Visually inventive and with a rich dose of British humour, directors David Bowers and Sam Fell’s film has thrilling adventure for the kids and droll wit for grown-ups. Jean Reno scores big laughs as stereotypical French mercenary Le Frog, but best of all are the singing slugs crooning pop hits as hilarious comment on the action.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate U
Running time 84mins

Review by Alan Jones

News: Aardman Animations

Aardman and US studio DreamWorks have parted company – pretty much as soon as their collaborative effort, this week’s Flushed Away, was released in America earlier this month. By all accounts, having invested $142.9 million in Flushed Away, only to see the film make $39 million in its first two weeks at US multiplexes, the American producers of the smash-hit Shrek flicks were less than impressed with the more modest showing of their Anglo-American effort.

Dreamworks’ decision to ditch their British partners breaks a five-film deal the two studios had previously agreed, and puts the future of planned projects like Crood Awakenings, a John Cleese-scripted comedy set in prehistoric times and originally set for release in 2008, into doubt.

The current status of Aardman’s other big feature-length project, Tortoise vs. Hare (based on a script by the creators of the Mike Bassett football manager character) also remains unclear. It was originally scheduled for release way back in 2003, and set to star the vocal talents of Bob Hoskins, Brenda Blethyn and Lee Evans, before being put on indefinite hold as long ago as summer 2001, before being revived after the Dreamworks team-up for a 2007 release.

Following the fire at the Brisol-based Aardman’s studios soon after the release of last year’s Wallace & Grommit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, anyone would think that the release of a feature-length Aardman movie has attracted some kind of curse.

Sill, Aardman still seems to be doing OK on the back of last years Oscar-winning Wallace & Grommit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – which, Dreamworks executives should note, also took a few weeks to really build momentum, but ended up pulling in $192.4 million worldwide… In any case, Aardman have landed at least one lucrative and high-profile project in the US to make up for the Dreamworks fallout: they have produced US superstore chain Wal-Mart’s Christmas advertising blitz, featuring a new double-act, renegade elves Wally and Marty.

News: Ian McKellen

Sir Ian is still insanely busy, with this week’s Flushed Away just the lastest in a whole slew of movie projects that have kicked off since his roaring successes in the X-Men and Lord of the Rings trilogies.

The veteran Shakespearian actor has three more movies currently in the pipeline – as well as a bit more stage work lined up for Spring 2007, taking the lead role in King Lear and that of patriarch Sorin in Checkov’s The Seagull, both for director Sir Trevor Nunn, at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Running from March to June, quite how Sir Ian will find time to make more movies is anyone’s guess.

On the film front, though, McKellen provided a voice-over for low-budget British sci-fi flick Displaced while filming for TV soap Coronation Street last year, and is apparently set to appear in the X-Men spin-off Magneto – a prequel that will explore how the supervillain became the evil metal-attracting mastermind that we know from the films (and comics), and his early friendship with X-Men leader Charles Xavier. The rest of the cast has not yet been announced, although Patrick Stewart is rumoured to be in talks.

McKellen’s biggest film role in the next year or so is therefore going to be as near-legendary (and somewhat controversial, to put it mildly) British imperial hero Cecil Rhodes in an intriguing-sounding adaptation of ann Harries’ complex historical novel The Collossus. Set at the end of the 19th century, it follows the travels of an Oxford professor – to be played by Colin Firth – to Africa during the latter days of Rhodes’ rule, and his gradual realisation of the inevitability of the impending Boer War. Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon will co-star.

To keep up with all his latest news, you could do a lot worse than bookmark Sir Ian’s excellent website.

News: Andy Serkis

Amusingly uncouth in this week’s Flushed Away, all the latest Andy Serkis news was covered on the release of The Prestige (still in theatres). To keep up to date, check out his info-packed website.

News: Bill Nighy

Having lent his distinctive voice to this week’s Flushed Away, Nighy will next be cropping up on the big screen in February, when he will have two films coming out in the space of a fortnight. First up is the Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench-starring Notes on a Scandal, a powerful thriller set around a love affair between a teacher and pupil, and the chaos that ensues. He is also the only actor currently to have been cast in Easy Virtue – an adaptation of the Noel Coward play by the writer/director behind the 1994 cult classic Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which is currently due some point late next year.

By far the most anticipated, however, are two sequels. Actually,the first, West Country police comedy Hot Fuzz, isn’t really a sequel at all – but it does reunite much of the cast and crew behind the superb zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, so is being anticipated nearly as much as if it were. Nighy may only be making a cameo appearance, but even so, its 16th February release date can’t come soon enough. The other sequel in which Nighy will be appearing – even if he is largely unrecognisable underneath a ton on special effects – needs no introduction: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, the final (for now) film in the insanely popular franchise.