Flushed Away

It's never a good sign when you have to sit at the keyboard for a good minute and a half trying to remember the name of the film you've seen at the weekend. I must be tired.

Let me start off with a gurn. This is different from a rant, in ways that will hopefully become clear later. I could put up with the scene in the Aeon Flux trailer that isn't in the film, because there could have been a last minute edit there, I could just about put up with the line in Pirates of the Caribbean 2 that isn't in the film, even though it's a corker. But this film's trailer features two characters who aren't in the film at all, and completely changes the setting for the scene!!!!

Having said that, this film is brilliant. I honestly couldn't tell if this pure CGI, or CGI and plasticine. It's made by DreamWorks and Aardman Animations, so it could be either really. According to IMDB, this is Aardman's first pure CGI film, done because water look terrible in plasticine.

The stars of the show are the slugs. From their impromptu musical numbers, to physical abuse slapstick, to just comedy background characters. There's some pure genius in here for the kids and the adults. You'll never look at Angel Delight in the same light again.

It's the age old tale of boy gets lost, boy meets girl, girl helps boy, boy goes home, boy misses girl and finally, boy saves girl from apocalypse.

Among the surprise cast, you'll find: Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis, Shane Richie, Kathy Burke, David Suchet, Miriam Margolyes and Rachel Rawlinson. Well, I was surprised.

Score: B

OQ:

Toad: You find my pain funny?

Le Frog: I find everyone's pain funny but my own. I'm French.

Spike: Any last requests?

Roddy: Yes. Could you fly, quite suddenly, off the boat, screaming like a girl?

Spike: What? [Is jerked off the boat by a cord]

Spike: AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Trivia: (from IMDB.com) Factual errors: At one point in the movie, an animal is loosening a cap on a threaded pipe, but they are turning it clockwise, which tightens for right-handed threads. When the cap comes off, it does show a right-handed thread. What sad lonely person noticed this?