Cartoons are back again and this is nowhere near as old as Alice In Wonderland as it was released back in 2006 and rather than the classic way of animated this one was pretty much CGI. It has competition scores of 6.6/10 from IMDb and 73% from rotten tomatoes. Please note me and the rotten one actually agree on something. Quick take a screenshot! It stars the voices of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Jean Reno, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis, Shane Richie & Ian McKellen. It was a team of Aardman Animation (Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run) and DreamWorks (who don’t need anything in a bracket now do they!) who spent a $149m budget bringing this thing together and it went on to gross $178 which really doesn’t take mathematician to work out isn’t much of a profit. This meant that the partnership between those two ended with this first full animated movie from Aardman Animations. Who went back to stop-motion. It was actually well received by critics but the public realised they had short arms and deep pockets when this movie was released in November and December. Which is bit dangerous if everyone is spending money on Christmas instead.
The plot if the title doesn’t give it away revolves a Kensington resident pet rat Roddy St. James whose owners have gone away on holiday leaving Roddy in charge of the flat. He is put out when Sid a common sewer rat gets into the house to find Roddy preparing to watch England in the World Cup Final. He cooks up a plan to flush Sid away but Sid wises up just in time to reverse the plan and Roddy gets ‘Flushed Away’ instead. AH! He discovers Ratropolis a rat city very similar to London and teams up with Rita Malone an enterprising scavenger rat who works the drains in her self-built boat the Jammy Dodger. Rita allows Roddy to join her on the boat and they end up doing battle with a group of toads who are a rival group of scavengers. Is that enough of a plot to get you going?
It should be as I think this is an underrated movie because of the box-office disappointment people make the assumption they are not going to enjoy it. You will if you give it a chance, Aardman have made so many funny, laugh out loud creations that they cannot go that far wrong even if a clash of personalities with DreamWorks didn’t produce their best works. They are both capable of creating greatness but just maybe not together. This was not bad and not as bad as the box office suggests. It has Shane Ritchie in it who I’ve met and is a genuinely nice and friendly bloke. So, you have to like this movie and just give it a chance.
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