Succinct Film Reviews: The Flushed Away Edition

Flushed Away, the most fun you'll have in sewage all year!

Longer take:

It's an excellent family film, fun for most of the family (very young children may get bored, though the film isn't boring, just not jangly enough for the wee ones who lack attention spans). It's veddy, veddy English (and I do mean English, and not British, it's set in the sewers of London, afterall).

The Aardmanized computer animation is charming (sorry, there's no other word, I know it's a cliche term for this stuff, but it really is charming). If they completely abandon the agonizing complexity of stop motion animation in favor of the CGI stuff, that would be sad, but understandable. They maintain their visual style, while opening up new possibilities in angles, lighting and scope.

Also, this film continues Hugh Jackman Month (from Oct 20th to Nov 22nd he's in 4 major films, The Prestige, Flushed Away, Happy Feet, The Fountain, and that doesn't count the other films he was in this year (X-Men 3, Scoop).

And another thing, they make fun of the French (in this case, actual Frogs). Yes, surrender jokes and mime jokes never get old.

Sir Ian McKellen does a very good Charles Laughton impression as the film's main baddy. The character design is definitely based on Mr. Laughton, and there are certain colorations in Sir Ian's delivery that suggest he took it in that direction on purpose. Or at least that's what I heard. I could be full of it.

Kate Winslet is sufficiently plucky as the love interest, and the singing slugs are a nice touch.

It's an all around good film, even if you don't have children to drag with you to a screening.

Plus, this is a message to all parents, if you haven't instilled in your child that shutting up in theatres is the polite and necessary thing to do, then your child isn't ready to see films in theatres, stick to the DVDs if you can't be bothered to have well behaved children. That is all.

(When seeing opening weekend kiddie films, I guess I'll stick to the 10pm showings from now on)