Flushed Away

Flushed Away
Promotional film poster.
Directed by	David Bowers Sam Fell
Written by	Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Simon Nye
Starring	Hugh Jackman Kate Winslet Ian McKellen
Music by	Harry Gregson Williams
Editing by	Eric Dapkewicz John Venzon
Studio	DreamWorks Animation Aardman Animations
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	November 3, 2006 (US)
Running time	85 mins
Country	United Kingdom
Budget	$149 million
Box office	$178,120,010 (Worldwide)

Flushed Away is a 2006 computer animated British film directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell. It is a partnership between Aardman Animations of Wallace and Gromit fame, and DreamWorks Animation, and is Aardman's first completely computer-animated feature as opposed to the usual stop-motion.

The film stars the voice talents of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Andy Serkis, Bill Nighy, Ian McKellen, Shane Richie and Jean Reno. The story was by Sam Fell, Peter Lord, Dick Clement, and Ian La Frenais, and the screenplay was written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Christopher Lloyd, Joe Keenan, and William Davies.

The film was released in movie theatres on November 3, 2006, and is distributed by Paramount Pictures, except for Switzerland, Spain, and the Netherlands, which were handled by Universal Pictures.

Plot

Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman) is a decidedly upper crust pet mouse who makes his home in a posh Kensington flat. While his owners are away on holiday Roddy plays around the house. When a common sewer rat named Sid (Shane Richie) comes spewing out of the sink and decides to stay, especially as England are playing Germany in the World Cup final, Roddy schemes to get rid of Sid by luring him into the "jacuzzi", which is actually the toilet. Sid may be an ignorant slob, but being a sewer rat, he knows his plumbing. He plays along and instead pushes Roddy in and flushes him away into the sewer. There, Roddy meets Rita Malone (Kate Winslet), an enterprising scavenger rat who works the drains in her faithful boat, the Jammy Dodger. Rita does not like Roddy initially, but ends up taking him along as her arch enemy The Toad (Ian McKellen) sends his rat henchmen, Spike (Andy Serkis) and Whitey (Bill Nighy), after her because she had stolen back her father's prized ruby a long time ago. The Toad despises all rodents to the point of hateful obsession, blaming rats for his fall from grace (he was once Prince Charles' pet). He decides to have them frozen with liquid nitrogen. However, The Toad's plan fails. Worse, during their escape, Rita takes a unique electrical cable. The cable is required to control the Floodgates. The Toad's evil plan is to open the gates during halftime of the World Cup, drowning the rats and their underground city in sewage. He can then use the depopulated city as a home for millions of his own tadpole offspring.

Roddy (right) and Rita (left) arguing over the ruby.

Roddy finds that the ruby is a fake and breaks it in front of Rita, enraging her, for she can now not get the money she needs for her large family. Roddy offers her a real ruby if she takes him back to Kensington. Accepting the offer, the pair first stop to visit her family before setting off. During Roddy's stay, he overhears a conversation that causes him to think that Rita had double-crossed him, so he steals the Jammy Dodger. When Rita catches up to him, he is able to clear up the misunderstanding. The pair evade Spike and Whitey pursuing in a remote-controlled toy boat, with Thimblenose Ted and others on eggbeater jet skis. During this scene, Roddy and Rita share a quick love moment. Incensed at his minions’ repeated failures, The Toad sends for his French cousin; an infamous, if somewhat laid back, mercenary known as Le Frog (Jean Reno). Le Frog and his subordinates intercept the duo and retrieve the cable, but Roddy and Rita use a plastic bag to lift themselves out of the sewer (snatching away the cable during the ascent) and get Roddy home, though the Jammy Dodger has to be sacrificed.

Back home, Roddy pays Rita the promised ruby and an emerald, then proceeds to show her around his house. She at first believes he has family in the home, but noticing his cage, she realizes he's a pet. Roddy tries to pass Sid off as his brother, but Sid and Rita know each other. Rita tries to persuade Roddy to come with her, but he is too proud to admit that he is lonely. By now, they have fallen in love but have not told each other their feelings. She departs, both of them broken-hearted, but is soon captured by The Toad. Talking to Sid about half-time, Roddy pieces together The Toad's plan. He gives Sid his cushy position and has him flush him back to the sewers to find Rita and save the city. Together, they defeat The Toad and freeze the wave of sewage generated by the flushing of countless toilets during the FIFA World Cup half-time with liquid nitrogen before it drowns the entire rat population.

Rita and Roddy build the Jammy Dodger Mark Two and set off in her with Rita's entire brood. A newspaper article reveals England had lost on penalties. Rita and Roddy become boyfriend and girlfriend. Later while the credits start, Roddy's former owner Tabitha comes back with a new pet (a cat), which frightens Sid.

Cast

• Hugh Jackman as Roderick "Roddy" St. James - The main protagonist. A lonely pampered pet mouse living in a Kensington apartment with a wealthy English family who is flushed down the toilet by Sid into the sewers.
• Kate Winslet as Rita Malone. The deuteragonist. A street smart scavenger rat and the oldest child of a large family. She is the captain of The Jammy Dodger.
• Ian McKellen as The Toad. The main antagonist. A big, pompous amphibian wanting the entire rat population to be killed off so he can make room for his hundreds of offspring.
• Jean Reno as Le Frog The secondary antagonist. The Toad's French cousin. He masters martial arts and is the leader of a team of hench-frogs.
• Andy Serkis as Spike, one of the Toad's top two hench-rats. Being the Toad's hench-rat is Spike's first job, despite him being only a teenager. He is the smarter of the two.
• Bill Nighy as Whitey, another of the Toad's top two hench-rats. Whitey is an albino rat, once working in a lab and he is Spike's partner. Unlike Spike, Whitey is gentle and less violent, but is also rather slow-witted and dumb.
• Shane Richie as Sid, an over-weight and lazy rat from the sewers. He is an acquaintance of Rita and her family and the one who flushed Roddy down the toilet into the sewers.

Production

The film's original concept involved pirates, and was pitched to DreamWorks soon after the release of Chicken Run in 2000. However, Aardman were told that there was no market for pirate films (this was before Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was released to great success in 2003), and were told to modernise the concept. By the time the rewrite was done, the project had to be postponed to make way for the production of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit; it was finally released after not only the original Pirates of the Caribbean, but also its first sequel.

The film's working title was Ratropolis, but it was changed due to its similarity to Disney-Pixar's Ratatouille. In Spain, the movie was released as Ratónpolis (ratón is Spanish for "mouse"). The Latin-American title for the film was Lo que el agua se llevó ("Gone with the Water"), a pun on Gone with the Wind.

Traditionally, Aardman have used stop-motion for their animated features, but it is very complex to render water with this technique, and using real water can damage plasticine models. It would have been very expensive to composite CGI into shots that include water, of which there are many in the movie, so they chose to make Flushed Away their first all-CGI production. The characters still resemble Aardman's classic characters, as the designs were taken straight from the original plasticine models. Several techniques were employed to give the impression of stop-motion animation, such as using replacement mouths for lip-synch rather than the interpolation typically seen in computer animation.

The film underwent many changes and versions, resulting in an inflated budget. For example, Roddy originally had two hamster manservants named Gilbert and Sullivan that were featured heavily in early trailers.

This is the second of two Aardman-produced films released by DreamWorks. Aardman's experience with DreamWorks during the making of the film led to a split between the two studios.

Home video release

Flushed Away was released on DVD February 20, 2007. It included behind the scenes, deleted info, Jammy Dodger videos and all new slug songs. It was released in the UK on April 2, 2007, where it was packaged with a plasticine 'Slug Farm' kit. The film has yet to be released on Blu-ray.

Reaction

Critical response

Flushed Away has a 72% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Box office performance

Flushed Away collected $64,488,856 in the United States, which was below the average of other CGI films from DreamWorks Animation, but $111,814,663 from international markets for a worldwide total of $176,319,242.

External links

• Official website
• Flushed Away at the Internet Movie Database
• Flushed Away at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Flushed Away at AllRovi
• Flushed Away at Rotten Tomatoes
• Flushed Away at Metacritic
• Flushed Away at Box Office Mojo
• Flushed Away at Keyframe - The Animation Resource