Flushed Away

Flushed Away
File:FAT!.jpg
Directed by	David Bowers Sam Fell
Written by	Dick Clement Ian La Frenais
Starring	Hugh Jackman Kate Winslet Ian McKellen Andy Serkis Bill Nighy Jean Reno Shane Ritchie John Motson
Music by	Harry Gregson Williams
Distributed by	DreamWorks Animation
Release date	November 3 2006
Running time	84 mins

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 & 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. The film was rated PG by the MPAA for crude humor and some language. It was distributed in Switzerland, Spain, and Netherlands by Universal Pictures.

Plot

Roddy St. James is a decidedly upper-crust pet rat who makes his home in a posh Kensington flat. When a common sewer rat named Sid comes spewing out of the sink and decides he lives where he likes, especially as England are playing Germany in the FIFA World Cup final 2006 (a reference to the FIFA World Cup 2006, which was at the time upcoming (though the final was Italy Vs. France) and the 1966 World Cup final, which was England Vs. West Germany), Roddy schemes to get rid of Sid by luring him into the "jacuzzi", which is actually the toilet bowl. Sid may be an ignorant slob, but being a sewer rat, he's no fool when it comes to knowing his plumbing. He plays along and instead pushes Roddy in and flushes him away into the sewer. He is startled, and startles a slug, and as the camera pans it reveals an entire community of slugs that is startled.

Roddy meets Rita Malone, an enterprising scavenger rat who works the drains in her faithful boat, the Jammy Dodger. Rita does not like Roddy at all initially, but ends up taking him along as the villainous Toad sends his henchrats Spike, a short, jumpy rat, Whitey, a large, dim, albino former lab rat (when Roddy says he is not involved in whatever happens because he does not belong in the sewers and claims he is an innocent bystander Whitey mistakes his name for Millicent Bystander and is thus referred to from the rest of the movie), and "Thimblenose" Ted, a zombie-like rat with a thimble for a nose, after her because she had stolen back her father's prized jewel a long time ago. The Toad royally despises all rodents, and it doesn't help matters any when Roddy accidentally knocks over and destroys his collection of Buckingham Palace souvenirs. He decides to have them iced…literally. He attempts to freeze them with liquid nitrogen, but fails due to Rita's plan to get out of their (Rita and Roddy) situation. This is incidental to the Toad, because in their successful bid to escape, Rita has taken a uniquely-designed electric cable. During the escape, Roddy accidentally tears Rita's belt, and accidentally pulls down her pants, showing her blue underpants (in mid-tear, Roddy says that "there are things I want to do, sights I want to see". Upon revealing Rita's underpants, he quickly states "and that's not one of them"). After this she uses the cable as a replacement belt, completely unaware of its significant value to the Toad. It is essential to the operation of the Floodgates, and therefore to his plan—to open the gates during halftime of the World Cup, and the ensuing mass bathroom break will flood the "city" and drown its population. He can then use the depopulated city as a home for millions of his own tadpole offspring.

File:RoddyRitaFlushedAway.jpg

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

After all the trouble of outwitting Toad and his henchrats, 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 needed for her family. Sorry about the development, Roddy promises a real ruby for Rita if she brings him back to Kensington.

Accepting the offer, the pair first stop to visit her family before setting off and they take to Roddy warmly. During Roddy's stay, he overhears a conversation that causes him to think that Rita had double-crossed him and, as revenge, he flees with the Jammy Dodger, soon stopping to Roddy's disbelief. When Rita catches up to him, even more enraged at what Roddy has done, he is stranded on a rubber ducky she used to catch up with him. Fortunately, Rita forgives Roddy when he explains that he heard her little brother suggest selling him to the Toad - he had been paying close attention to her family in admiration. More trouble arises soon enough, with the pair encountering Spike and Whitey in a remote-controlled toy boat, with Thimblenose Ted and others reinforcing them on eggbeater jet skis. Despite their arsenal, their pursuers fail miserably—now that the two have reached a resolution, they make a formidable team.

Incensed at his minions’ repeated failures, the Toad decides to send to France for his cousin — an infamous, if somewhat laid back and degenerate, mercenary known as Le Frog, who refers to his cousin as a fruitcake, due to his obsession with rats. He brings along his henchfrogs to intercept the duo and retrieve the cable, but fails, with Roddy and Rita using a plastic bag to lift them out of the sewer and take Roddy home, with the Jammy Dodger being sacrificed along the way. Inside the house, Roddy pays Rita her promised ruby and an emerald, then proceeds to show her around. 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 and says he's called Rupert, but Sid and Rita know each other. Rita continues to persuade Roddy to come with her, but he shows that he's too proud to admit he's lonely. Visibly upset by this, she departs for the sewers, but is soon captured by Toad's gang.

During a conversation with Sid about half-time, Roddy realizes Toad's plan completely and has Sid flush him back to the sewers to find Rita and save the "sewer city." Re-uniting with Rita, they win a fight against Toad, and the resulting wave generated by the flushing of hundreds of toilets during the FIFA World Cup half-time compromised with liquid nitrogen before it drowns the entire rat population. After being "renowned as heroes" by the rats, Rita and Roddy bring into commission the Jammy Dodger Mark Two and sets off with her and the entire brood for new beginnings. While Rita and Roddy live in harmony down in the sewers, Roddy's former owner comes back with a new pet - a cat, which frightens Sid. A newspaper article reveals England had lost on penalties.

Characters

The characters in the film are all rats, frogs and toads with an exception of some partially "unseen" humans.

• Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman) - A cultured pet rat who resides in a posh flat in the London district of Kensington. Roddy's life is one of non-stop leisure (he begins the film by staging everything from volleyball and golf games to movie premieres with his owner's dolls). However, he is visibly lonely despite his perceived freedom. His personality is initially standoffish, nervous to the point of cowardice and self-centred, but he grows throughout the film to be brave and loyal to his friend Rita. Roddy is clearly very intelligent, though more naive and a lot less cunning and resourceful than Rita. A lot of the film's comedic moments centre around Roddy's clumsiness and subsequent apologising when inadvertently destroying his surroundings. Though despite these outbursts of almost Clouseau-level uncoordination, he is also apparently an excellent dancer. His name is probably a nod to late actor Roddy McDowell.

• Rita Malone (Kate Winslet) - a scavenger sewer rat who scrapes a living captaining her boat the Jammy Dodger (which is quite literally an old tub), in order to support her family. Though her luck seems to change with the discovery of a ruby supposedly fallen down the drain of Buckingham Palace, it is coveted by the fiercely Royalist crime boss "The Toad". Probably due to being "Big Sister" to an army of siblings, Rita's attitude to seemingly everything is one of no-nonsense authority, though she is visibly upset at both the loss of the ruby and the prospect of saying goodbye to Roddy. She seems to enjoy taunting the Toad's pursuing henchrats by slapping and wiggling her bottom.

• The Toad (Sir Ian McKellen) - an effete English toad and crimelord, exiled from the world above via a lavatory, who evidently parlayed his commanding nature and large size into a criminal empire in the rats' city. Blames ratdom at large for his fall from grace, to the point of hateful obsession. He is fanatically devoted to the Royal Family, and collects garish tourist souvenirs which he treats as high-class Objets d'Art. He initially appears to feel kinship with the equally-posh Roddy, until the latter's clumsiness results in the destruction of the beloved collection. His character is very similar to Mister Bridger, the character portrayed by Noel Coward in The Italian Job.

• Le Frog (Jean Reno) - a French mercenary frog, he is The Toad's cousin and leader of a cell of Gallic ninja frogs whom The Toad hires when his henchrats fail to deliver. Le Frog is quite disdainful of all things British (British wine seems to physically offend him, as well as the very idea of "York-shire puddings" and "Chips and Fish"). In particular his cousin, whom he describes at one point as "Le Fruitcake". His general attitude towards working for The Toad is weary duty tinged with familial embarrassment. Curiously, he is quite flirtatious with Rita, evidently not sharing his cousin's prejudices towards rodents.

• Whitey (Bill Nighy) - the less-intelligent of the Toad's right hand rats. In contrast to the berserk antics of Spike, Whitey, despite his hulking size, is actually very gentle and polite, even to those he is supposed to be intimidating. He is never seen engaging in any actual violence, which is probably why he manages to escape without serious injury during the film. Seemingly a reversal of the "evil albino" stereotype, Whitey was a former labrat "up top", and was used in shampoo experiments, which left his fur bright white, though it did cure his dandruff. He is apparently fond of curry, despite being left with, in his own words, "a bum like a Japanese flag" the next day.

• Spike (Andy Serkis) - the smarter of Toad's top two henchrats, which is admittedly not saying much. Described by director Sam Fell as "a sixteen-year-old in his first real job", Spike is characterised by a manic enthusiasm for villainy, despite being too stupid to be genuinely evil. He professes his middle name to be "danger", but it is actually "Leslie". Despite his small size, relatively young age and general ineptitude, he frequently chastises his friend and colleague Whitey for what he deems un-hitman-like behaviour (such as wearing pink mittens). He wields a large wooden nutcracker called "The Persuader", with which he performs intimidating (if unconvincing) ventriloquism. Spike spends the majority of the film being injured and is very touchy about having "little 'ands".

• Sid (Shane Richie) - A sewer rat who ends up in Roddy's house. Though slobbish and uncouth, he is not unintelligent, handily turning the tables on Roddy's clumsy attempt to get rid of him early in the film. Sid's choice of clothing was originally thought to be a tee shirt by Richie and in a featurette, he reveals that the clothing is in fact a pair of underpants.

• Fat Barry - a henchrat (Christopher Knights)
• Thimblenose Ted - a henchrat (Christopher Fairbank)
• Ladykiller - a henchrat (Sam Fell)
• Harold - a crackpot street prophet warning people against a flood he declares will render the city and its inhabitants "doooooooomed!"
• Police Constable Colin - a Police rat.
• Marcel - French frog, mime
• Fergus - Rita's large younger brother
• Shocky - one of Rita's brothers, who constantly zaps rats with a large Battery zapper. (Known for saying "They Call me Shockey". Roddey asks why and Shockey shocks him.)
• Liam - one of Rita's brothers, whom nobody listens to and is referred to as 'stupid' by his sister, Rita
• Tabitha - Roddy's human owner
• Mr. Malone - Rita's father (David Suchet)
• Mrs. Malone - Rita's mother (Kathy Burke)
• Granny Malone (Miriam Margolyes) - Rita's grandmother, who seems to be under the impression that Roddy is Welsh popstar Tom Jones and is, unexpectedly, a very fast swimmer.
• Rodint - rat street artist
• Slugs - Introduced first as one scared creature, they inhabit the sewers, and constantly reappear, often singing across many scenes as a Greek chorus. They supply the vocals to every piece of incidental music in the film.

This is Bill Nighy and Andy Serkis' second film together. The other being Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker.

This is also Sir Ian McKellen and Jean Reno's second film together. The other being The Da Vinci Code

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 made), 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. To give the impression of stop motion animation the movement of the mouths of the characters was not motion blurred.

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.

Sequel

Flushed Away Again will be released on May 7 2010 along with Narnia 3. The Writing stages are over and production will begin December 2008.

DVD 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.

Reaction

Critical response

Flushed Away acquired 75% 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 a healthy $111,814,663 from international markets.

Worldwide total: $176,319,242.. IMDB reports that the budget was approximately $143m (less than Ratatouille, but almost twice as much as Madagascar). Budget figures do not normally include promotional and distribution costs, so it is doubtful if the movie would have done any better than broken even.

External links

• Flushed Away Official website
• Template:Bcdb title
• Flushed Away at IMDb
• Flushed Away at Keyframe - the Animation Resource
• Songs