For the first time ever Aardman Animations, who gave us Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run, have put their clay figures into storage and taken a step into the 21st century, making a film that looks a great deal like one of their homemade stop-motion extravaganzas, but is actually computer animated. Flushed Away, the story of an upper class pet mouse flushed down the loo by a bullying rat, features great animation, an all star British voice cast and something that all kids love—toilet humor.
For the “No Clay! No Way!” purists out there it should be noted that the good folks at Aardman chose to go with computer animation for Flushed Away because of the number of scenes involving water, which is nearly impossible to portray convincingly in stop motion. To lend a handmade patina to the film they used software that reproduces the ‘imperfections’ found in claymation like thumb prints and dropped frames.
Flushed Away does not take place in the under water world of Finding Nemo or SpongeBob. No, most of this movie happens in the London sewer, a dark and dank Ratropolis occupied by rodent citizens who are threatened with extinction by a Toad King (Ian McKellen) who resembles a froggy Jabba the Hutt and his scheming rat henchmen. Dropped into this locality is Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman), a snobby pet mouse from the Royal neighborhood of Kensington, who is used to the finer things in life.
Despite the best efforts of the evil Toad and his French Amphibian Ninjas to do Roddy in, he manages, with the help of an enterprising scavenger named Rita (Kate Winslet) to uncover the Toad’s nefarious plot to destroy Ratropolis and discovers that home is where the heart is, not just where all your stuff is. It’s sort of a rodent Upstairs Downstairs with Hollywood action.
Flushed Away lacks some of the cheerful charm of good old Wallace and Gromit, but what it lacks in charm it makes up for in sheer inventiveness in its action-packed story. It swirls along at quite a clip, effortlessly mixing literate verbal and visual jokes—we glimpse a cockroach reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis—with potty humor that’ll appeal to the kids. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find themes of urban loneliness, the reciprocated condescension between Brits and the French and the class system that still exists in Britain.
Worth the price of admission alone is the hilarious Greek Chorus of slugs who provide musical accompaniment for many of the scenes.
There was a ripple of fear in movieland when Bryan Singer, who directed the first two installments of the X-Men franchise, stepped down and was replaced by Brett Ratner. Why? Because Ratner is a hack. He makes bad movies and probably even plays hacky sack with his friends on the weekends. The high points on his CV were the Rush Hour movies, a dreadful—but profitable—duo of films starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.
Happily I can report that the fear was mostly unfounded, and at best should be downgraded to a feeling of only slight discomfort. Ratner has made his best movie yet with X-Men: The Last Stand, but has taken an idea, involving a mutant cure, which could have been the best X-Men story arc so far and turned it into a conventional, but entertaining summer blockbuster.
For the uninitiated, the X-Men movies are set in a world where mutants, genetically gifted beings who a variety of powers, struggle to find a place in a society that, for the most part, rejects them. A school, run by an enigmatic mutant named Professor Xavier—who looks a great deal like Patrick Stewart—is a safe haven for young mutants. They live there and are trained to use their powers for good. The school is also home to the X-Men, a band of superheroes who fight against mutant injustice.
In the new film it is announced that humans have discovered a cure for mutancy. A simple injection that will turn mutants into homo sapiens, taking away whatever their natural power is. Of course this drives the most radical of the mutant, the ex-X-Man Magneto, played by Ian McKellen to stage The Last Stand, a face off between mutants and homo sapiens.
The movie shuns anything more than the most cursory comment on the ethics of the right of people to choose how they want to live or the effects of governmental control vs. freedom of choice. The allusions to Nazi Germany are obvious, but history is rich with examples of oppression that could have been mined here, but Ratner seems to be saying, “Social comment! Leave that for the eggheads.” He is more content to make your eyeballs dance with elaborate special effects and crazy visuals. It’s a shame that the chance to deepen the material by placing it in some sort of social context was ignored. The movie, which could have been memorable, is now merely a good summer blockbuster.
A word of advice to X-Men fanatics: sit through the end credits for a little hint of what is to come in future X-Men installments.
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SYNOPSIS: The prequel to the immensely popular “Lord of the Rings” films is a coming of age story for Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), a stay-at-home hobbit from Bag End, in Hobbiton in the Shire. He’s content with his quiet life until Gandalf (Ian McKellen), a wizard, recruits him to help a group of thirteen Dwarves (led by their king Thorin Oakenshield, played by Richard Armitage) in their quest to reclaim their former home, the Lonely Mountain, and its treasure from the dragon Smaug. It’s on this peril filled journey that Baggins matures, battles trolls, goblins and meets the creature that will shape his fate—Gollum (once again played by Andy Serkis).
Star ratings:
Richard: 3 ½ Stars
Ned: 3 Stars
Richard: Ned, as much as the story and performances, people will be talking about the presentation of the movie. Shot and projected at 48 frames a second—twice the industry standard—the picture is so vivid, so pristine, it doesn’t really look like a movie. Combine that with the 3D and it’s like watching mega high-definition. Every goblin wart and troll blemish distinct enough to give dermatologists everywhere nightmares. What did you think of the mega-super-hi-definition look of the movie?
Ned: I have to say, the 48 frames per second was a problem for me. It often looked somewhere between a super-high definition 1980s BBC miniseries and a video game, and it just felt utterly un-cinematic. Saying that it doesn’t really look like a movie hits the nail on the head. Christopher Nolan has harped on in the past about film having a “warmth” that video can’t replicate, and I think I see what he means here. But the biggest crime, I think, is that the sweeping shots of the gorgeous New Zealand landscape looked fake.
RC: Perhaps it’s like the difference between vinyl or CD. I prefer the warm sound of old school vinyl to the hard digital preproduction of CD. The pops and skips are part of the experience, just as film blur and grain are a part of watching 35 mm projected on the big screen. Having said that, Gollum is awesome at 48 frames a second. The extended scene, (for the record, most of the scenes in the film could be called extended), in which Bilbo and Gollum meet and trade riddles is one of the highlights of the film thanks to Serkis’s astounding motion capture performance.
NE: That scene is the true highlight of the film, and it coincidentally is where Martin Freeman, as the younger Bilbo, really shines as well. But even with this standout, Peter Jackson and company manage to spoil it (for me at least) by overdoing Gollum’s last line to beat the viewer over the head with another reminder that all this leads to “the Lord of the Rings.” It’s a bad habit running through the film that grows tedious. Elijah Wood’s cameo is particularly clumsy in this regard, with him basically describing what he’s going to do in his first scene in “Fellowship of the Ring” and then running off to do it.
RC: It may be clumsy, but I think fans of the series will revel at the chance of revisiting the characters!
NE: Well, they’ll have plenty of chances. If you like this one, the good news is it’s just the first of three movies.
For the first time ever Aardman Animations, who gave us Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run, have put their clay figures into storage and taken a step into the 21st century, making a film that looks a great deal like one of their homemade stop-motion extravaganzas, but is actually computer animated. Flushed Away, the story of an upper class pet mouse flushed down the loo by a bullying rat, features great animation, an all star British voice cast and something that all kids love—toilet humor.
