Maybe I should just lighten up a bit when it comes to animated movies (especially when it comes to the more kid orientated stuff), but in a time when more and more of them get crafted using computers rather than more, traditional, handcrafted methods, I truly believe that the old ways must be fiercely protected. So it came as something of a staggering shock when Aarman, the animation champions stop motion photography, announced that their 2006 film, Flushed Away, was going full digital with nary a hint of an armsture to be seen. While I tried to restrain the feelings that I’d somehow been betrayed by the studio that gave us Wallace And Gromit (told you I should lighten up), the fact that they shifted from pixels to plasticine strangely felt like they were cheating.
However, in an attempt to get past my own issues, I was willing to give Flushed Away a chance – after all, while their methods had changed, surely this was the same people who had given us the unfeasibly witty likes of Chicken Run and Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, so how bad could it be?
Roddy St. James is pet rat who lives a palatial cage in a large, snazzy, apartment located in Kensington who has all of his wants and needs cared for by his owner, Tabitha. However, while he has an expansive wardrobe and all the mod cons he could ask for, he’s also horribly lonely, with his only companions being his owners toys, but all that changes when his family goes away on holiday. Emerging out of the kitchen sink is belching sewer rat, Sid, who can’t believe his luck that he’s stumbled upon such refinery, especially on the eve of the final of the World Cup. However, despite his issues with loneliness, Sid proves to have too much personality, but after an attempt to flush him back down into the sewers goes very wrong, it’s Roddy who finds himself sent whooshed down the pipes to end up in the bustling, subterranean city of Ratropolis.
As he wanders around a bustling capital ingeniously built out of discarded refuse, he soon gets tangled up in the misadventures of professional scavenger, Rita Malone, who is locked in a battle of wills with extravagant local gangster, the Toad, over a jewel the smoking jacket clad amphibian previously stole from her father. After Rita and Roddy fire up a classic odd couple scenario while trying to flee the Toad’s henchrats, Spike and Whitey, on Rita’s tricked out boat, the Jammy Dodger, the two manage to bond despite their differences in class.
However, unbeknownst to them, the Toad’s crazed plans go way beyond just wanting a jewel for his Royal collection. It seems that the Toad’s hatred of rats has become a murderous obsession and that he is about to set a master plan in motion that will wash Ratropolis right out of the sewers. Can Roddy and Rita put their differences aside to halt the Toad’s warty plan, or are they due for a tongue lashing from the villain’s French secret weapon, Le Frog?
Now, it should be recorded that I don’t have a particular problem with CGI animation in general – after all there are many examples of magnificent movies that’s utilised this particular art form, but witnessing Aardman put down the apature clicker and pick up the mouse feels almost… wrong, and almost feels like almost finding out that Jim Henson was a secret racist or something. The directors, Sam Fell and David Bowers, certainly both strive to keep that distinctive Aardman aesthetic in place (there’s certainly no shortage of overbites, that’s for sure), but the fact that each shot no longer takes quite as so many agonising work hours to complete, it feels that a lot of bad habits that arises from CGI have risen their heads. For a start, now that every shot hasn’t demanded everything in frame has been painstaking moved a fraction of a millimeter, the animators now seem to be reluctant to let any of their characters stand still, even for a second. This means that for some reason, Roddy seems to feel the need to needlessly pratfall so much, I was genuinely starting to think he has a serious inner-ear issue – no, seriously, he doesn’t just take a sudden tumble at the end of every scene, it’s closer to faceplanting at the end of every sentence, which soon becomes incredibly annoying. Also out of whack is the quiet, quaint Britishness which comes as standard with every Aardman venture, but in Flushed Away, the flag waving becomes so strangely extreme, it’s almost as if the film is trying to compensate for something as it obnoxiously crams in jokes about the world cup and the Royal Family. Finally – and possibly most importantly – that tangibility that comes with stop motion is all but erased leaving sterile, smooth textures with nary a finger print to be seen and when you add the fact that Hugh Jackman’s priggish Roddy and Kate Winslet’s tomboyish Rita aren’t actually that interesting, there’s a serious problem.
However, such is the talent of Aardman, it’s virtually impossible for them to turn in something that’s genuinely unwatchable. So while the film gets down to business of being as loud as possible, there’s a sizable amount of that old Aardman charm lurking about to keep things ticking along. The obvious one is the world building which sees a sewer based London faithfully recreated out of household junk. Electric whisks become jetskis, carrier bags become parachutes and there’s something quite endearing about Tower Bridge being remade out of a telephone box and a portaloo, but even better than the surroundings and an endless stream of visual jokes, are the movie’s bizarre pantheon of villains. Attacking the role of The Toad like he’s still treading the boards at the Old Vic is Ian McKellen whose booming, eloquent tones are perfectly at odds with his bug-eyed crime boss and adding to the amphibian insanity is Jean Reno as Le Frog who seems to be incredibly game for any joke that seems to be up for taking the piss out of the French (yes, there’s a surrender joke). Elsewhere we have the pairing of Andy Serkis and Bill Nighy as bumbling henchmen and I have to say, it may just be worth the price of admission alone to hear the latter complaining that last night’s curry left his bum “looking like a Japanese flag”.
However, despite all this – and even removing the lack of stop motion from the equation – Flushed Away just doesn’t have that same special sauce as a Chicken Run or a Were-Rabbit as the jokes seem to favour quantity over quality. Worse yet, it’s under performance at the box office actually managed to sever the union between Aardman and Dreamworks completely, which is a pretty serious ramification when you consider that the movie makes a joke about someone mistaking a floating chocolate bar as a giant poo.
Fun in a certain way, but way too unpolished to match up to previous Aardman productions, the leap to CGI proves that maybe these alchemists with plasticine should stay in their highly praised lane and leave the more garish stuff to lesser studios. But while Flushed Away proved to be a major disappointment, there’s still just enough of that old magic to prevent you sending round the u-bend.
🌟🌟
We Have Issues 