Flushed Away
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 "I'll be seeing you, my friend." - Sid
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Flushed Away is a 2006 British-American computer-animated action-adventure comedy film directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell, produced by Cecil Kramer, David Sproxton, and Peter Lord, and written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan and William Davies.
It is the third and final film to be co-produced by Aardman Animations and DreamWorks Animation, following Chicken Run (2000) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). It was Aardman's first completely computer-animated feature, as opposed to their trademark stop-motion animation.
Plot
A pet fancy rat called Roddy St. James (voiced by Hugh Jackman), after a mishap with a sewer rat named Sid (Shane Richie), ends up flushed down from his swank Kensington home into the underworld of vermin beneath London. Desperate to get home, he encounters Rita (Kate Winslet), who is on the run from a crime lord called The Toad (Ian McKellen).
Why It Can Be Flushed Away (in a good way)
- It was Aardman's first feature film to use with CG. The animation is pretty good and is stylized to look like claymation.
- Great voice acting, especially Hugh Jackman as Roddy, Kate Winslet as Rita and even Andy Serkis as Spike.
- Ian McKellen did a great job playing/voice acting The Toad as the film's main antagonist.
- Ratropolis seems to be a great place in England.
- The Toad's backstory about how he was Prince Charles' pet before getting flushed in the toilet after the Prince got a pet rat is saddening, and perfectly explains why he hates rats.
- Great action scenes.
- The singing slugs are hilarious.
- Great songs, especially Ice Cold Rita.
- There's even some Easter Eggs from other DreamWorks properties and the works of Aardman too in the vein of Pixar, like an Alex plush toy referencing that character from Madagascar.
- The characters are hilarious and mostly likeable, particularly Roddy and Rita.
- Funny scenes like when Rita beats up Roddy.
- It has many funny jokes such as the time joke.
Bad Qualities
- Executive meddling: The movie was originally to plot about a pirate, but the distributor (DreamWorks) didn't want to make a pirate movie, and they were forced to modify ideas.
- Sid can be unlikable at times, especially since he can come as a jerk.
- Roddy can also be unlikable at times, especially since he broke the Ruby (without good reason) that Rita needed to pay for a new boat.
- Some of the humour or attempts at humour are unfunny or poor (e.g. The Chock joke in the scene where Roddy is first time flushed and the Scene where Spike accuses Whitey of Flatulence).
- While many of the soundtrack choices are great, some are poorly timed or don't fit the film properly (especially for certain scenes).
- The animation for the human characters looks plastic-like.
- While stylised like Aardman, the Animation and art style are not Stop Motion, which is stupid and disappointing for a film that Aardman Studios participated in the making of.
- The Rats/Mice are somewhat poorly designed as they have ears to the side rather than to the top as nonfiction x2 mice/rats have.
Reception
Critical response
Flushed Away receiving positive reviews from critics and audiences, who praised its animation, characters, writing, soundtrack, humour and voice performances. It has a 73% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 6.7/10 based on 131 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads "Clever and appealing for both children and adults, Flushed Away marks a successful entry into digital animated features for Aardman Animations." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 74, indicating "generally favourable reviews.
Box office
Flushed Away collected $64,488,856 in the United States, which was below the average of other CGI films from DreamWorks Animation, and $111,814,663 from international markets for a worldwide total of $176,319,242. The film opened to number three in its first weekend, with $18,814,323, behind Borat and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. Produced on a budget of $149 million, poor box office reception resulted in a $109-million write-down for DreamWorks Animation, and in a termination of the partnership with Aardman Animations.
Game adaptation
In 2006, Japanese game publisher D3 Publisher, a subsidiary of Bandai Namco, released a video game of the same name.
