‘FLUSHED AWAY’
The hero is a snappy Brit rat, Roddy (voiced by Hugh Jackman). Strikingly humanoid, with a full set of rounded teeth, Roddy is swooshed down the pipe from his upscale master's home. He enters a sewer that is a bright, almost antiseptic theme park of rodent life, including perky Rita (Kate Winslet).
For villains, there are frogs. For a cool villain, there's a French frog called (such is wit) Le Frog and voiced by Jean Reno. Roddy's voyage down green but not grotty water gets choral comment from darling slugs, popping in with retro reliables like "Proud Mary" and "Don't Worry, Be Happy."
Even very young minds, eager for this, may sense that they have fled daytime TV for its mirror and echo. The animators load each scene with color and motion, but creativity comes down to Roddy bumping his crotch hard, four times in fast succession. With that dull ouch, hopes for a brisk, tailed cousin of "The Third Man" vanish.
Among the voices, bannered on screen as if the actors were really starring, talents like Ian McKellen, Bill Nighy and Andy Serkis surf on their script pages. They got paid well to freshen material that seems utterly canned, though the movie is being sold as an heir of "Shrek."
In Daniel M. Kimmel's new book "The Dream Team," about the "rise and fall" of the honcho-heavy DreamWorks studio that was (among much else) to strop a new cutting edge for animation, "Flushed Away" is flushed away near the end, already heading to DVD.
A Paramount Pictures release. Directors: David Bowers, Sam Fell. Writers: Dick Clement, Ian LaFrenais, Chris Lloyd, others. Voice cast: Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Jean Reno, Bill Nighy, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis. Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes. Rated PG. 2 stars.
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