My Movie Review on Flushed Away · 1:06am Feb 10th, 2023
Greetings and salutations, my friends.
This is your top-of-the-line film, TV show, and episode reporter here with another review.
Today, for the 1st installment of this year's February Festivity, I'm gonna give you guys my take of the third and final collaboration between Dreamworks and Aardman: "Flushed Away".
Here's the rundown of it:
Roddy is a pampered pet rat who lives in an apartment at Kensington, London. Whenever his owners are away, he gets to have the house for himself and live his life like a king.
However, Roddy's life changes when a sewer rat named Sid decides to make himself at home. When he tries to get rid of Sid by flushing him down the toilet, Roddy ends up getting flushed instead. Lost in the sewers, his only chance of getting home is if he teams up with a street-wise scavenger rat named Rita, who apparently has problems of her own.
Meanwhile, a villainous Toad has some nefarious plans for the citizens of Ratropolis, and they all involve a little something stolen from him by Rita.
I really can't lie, I've been wanting to make a review of "Flushed Away" for quite a while, although I'll admit that it wasn't something I grew up with. I frequently saw a behind-the-scenes trailer for the film whenever I inserted my DVD copy of "Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the WERE-RABBIT", and I remember seeing the film once on cable, but other than that..."Flushed Away" wasn't a movie that I made much of a connection with. My interest in personally-acquainting myself with the movie was still very high, though, which was a perfect motivation for making this review.
I chose to review "Flushed Away" for my February Festivity since the romance between Roddy and Rita played a big part in the story, along with Peter Lord describing it as "The African Queen with the gender roles reversed."
Coming from a guy who finally gave "Flushed Away" a more in-depth watch, I'd like to say that...sadly, I don't consider the movie to be a favorite of mine nor something people could really invest themselves in. The biggest reason for why is because it felt like the movie couldn't make up its mind over whether to be an Aardman film or a Dreamworks movie.
The direction by Sam Fell and David Bowers, the story by Fell, Peter Lord, Dick Clement, and Ian La Frenais, and the screenplay by Clement, Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan, and Will Davies, were a definite reason for why I think this, that's for sure.
Don't get me wrong, I thought the story was deeply well-worked, and there certainly weren't any dull moments. There were even many jokes and comedic moments in the movie that were deeply fun to watch, examples being the gags revolving around the French frogs. However, with how many writers were involved in the story and screenplay, you'd think that the film would have a strong structure. Instead, it seemed to serve as a weakness for the film, because it didn't feel like there was any sense of cooperative collaboration going on.
Despite the movie being marketed as a romantic-comedy, the filmmakers never ensured that the chemistry and growing bond between Roddy and Rita was strong enough for the story to be classified as such. Heck, despite how fun much of the comedy was, the film seemed too desperate to be funny, and there were many gags that were either flatly-executed or would drag a bit. Much of the time, it seemed like the film team didn't know whether to make the humorous style reflective of Dreamworks' or Aardman's.
The animation was a mixed bag as well.
I'm well aware that this was Aardman's first out of two attempts to make computer-animated movies, and I understand if they wanted to experiment and try something different. Even on that ground, though, the animation was surprisingly cheap-looking for a film made on a budget of 149 million dollars. The character animation was incredibly jarring, and Aardman's distinct visual style for their characters in general clearly works better in stop-motion. The settings also looked like they were made on a TV show-level, and the signs that they were computer-animated were easy to spot.
On the bright side, the voice acting, characters, and character development were what I found to be the movie's greatest highlights.
Every performer sounded like they were having a great time portraying their parts, and they gave their characters personalities that helped them be distinct and memorable in the best way. It was also amazing how they made any piece of dialogue and verbal comedic-timing work, and they imbued their emotions & matched the physically-involved moments brilliantly. Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet were marvelous in the roles of Roddy and Rita, and the chemistry they created between their characters was delightful. Plus, Ian McKellen did an excellent job translating the Toad as a three-dimensional villain who's intimidating, unpredictable, and very funny; Jean Reno was also quite a scene-stealer in the role of Le Frog, and so were Andy Serkis as Spike and Bill Nighy as Whitey.
The characters themselves proved to be a delight to hang with, and they certainly weren't without personal developments. Without a doubt, the characters who grew the most were Roddy, Rita, and the Toad.
In conclusion, though, "Flushed Away" is an animated feature that I consider to be surprisingly lackluster. Aside from the top-notch voice acting and characters, as well as having fun humorous bits, the film itself is hardly the best movie by either Dreamworks or Aardman. It's certainly not a movie I'd want to see over and over again, that's for sure.
So, I rate "Flushed Away" 3 out of 5 stars.
Unlike you, I love seeing this film repeatedly! I gave it a 5/5 stars on my end!
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I’m not surprised. If you like the movie, that’s okay by me.
I insist this movie is underrated, but I agree with your point of it having little re-watch value. It's one of those movies you watch once in a very long while that plays out better when you can't remember the punchlines.
This is yet another film I have to re-watch. Can't remember if I ever loved it or not.
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Funny thing. I’ve actually been interested in seeing you make your own review of “Flushed Away” for quite some time.
I never really watch this movie never caught my attention I only saw it during the trailers or commercials of it kind of has like this design of Wallace and Gromit it was a weird year for animations