Hugh Jackman is everywhere these days, from reprising his iconic Wolverine role in summer blockbuster X3, to starring twice alongside Scarlett Johansson in Woody Allen's Scoop and Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, and now, just lending his voice to a lead character in the animated film Flushed Away, co-starring his summer blockbuster star Sir Ian McKellen. Soon to come will be Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain. Whew! There seems to be no stopping this Hollywood flavour of the month!

Despite this animated movie being yet another one of many based on talking animals, Flushed Away doesn't try too hard to be funny by steamrolling pop culture into the story. It just is funny with its deft touches, be it dialogue, slapstick, or various sight gags. Although it's set primarily in the sewers, it's beautiful chaos, with loads of little details all over that you'll probably need to watch it twice over to appreciate all the effort put in to create the computerized graphical sets.

At first glance, you might think you're watching a Wallace and Gromit animated show. Yes, this is produced by the same studio, Aardman Animations, in association with Dreamworks, and it is no wonder that the animation, although computer generated, maintained a very clay like look and feel, as well as character designs bearing similar resemblance in style to W&G.

The story is simple enough, yet adequately satisfying by the time the end credits roll. As the trailer suggested, Aristocratic rat pet Roddy from Kensington (Hugh Jackman) thought he just had the whole classy apartment to himself, when an unexpected guest Sid (Shane Richie) from the sewers gatecrashes into his abode, and ejects him through the "jacuzzi". All these in less than 10 minutes. So begins a mad journey in an unknown sewer world which replicated the modern London City above it with junk, where he has to figure out friend from foe, and find his way back to where he belongs.

The themes of family and friends do not come on too strongly, instead the story preferred to let the character interactions bring forth the messages. Supporting or interfering in his quest are characters like Rita (Kate Winslet),The Toad (Ian McKellen),French Le Frog (Jean Reno),and rat minions Whitey (Bill Nighy) and Spike (Andy Serkis). It's quite commendable that in its less than 90 minutes runtime, it allowed for quite a bit of set action pieces to develop, along with almost laugh-a-minute lines of dialogue, a good mix of songs (Hugh sings!) and ooh, a diabolical plot.

But what perhaps is the show stealer, are the sewer slugs. Ever popping up and performing at the right time, I'm sure they are crowd favourites despite their less than pleasant looking exterior. I wonder if they do sell the soft toy version, as it should be quite hilarious.

If too many animated flicks left this year has left you jaded with the genre, Flushed Away just flushes away the competition. Worth checking out on the big screen!

Despite "Flushed Away" being a film from Aardman (the makers of "Wallace and Grommit"),this is NOT a stop-motion picture. According to IMDB, the water was difficult to animate using stop-motion and CGI seemed like a better bet. However, when seen now in 2019, the CGI now looks very dated....whereas stop-motion would have held up better.

When this film debuted, it did not perform well in theaters and lost money for Aardman. This might indicate that others were not exactly enthralled by the CGI...or the story itself of a rat crawling through sewers wasn't exactly something folks wanted to see. Or, more likely, the film cost an astronomical 149,000,000 to make and even if the film did okay at the box office, it was going to lose money. I assume most of this huge budget was to pay for the big-name voice actors.

When the story begins, a family leaves for a trip...and soon the family pet, a rat named Roddy (Hugh Jackman),runs amok in the house. Ultimately, he ends up going on a big adventure involving some ruby and a host of baddies...in the sewers! How he got there and what occurs....you'll have to see it for yourself.

So is it any good? It's fair and far from one of Aardman's best. I think a lot of it is because the main character lacks the endearing qualities of many of the studio's leading characters. The rat simply isn't particularly cute nor do you care much about him or his plight.

Flushed Away is very entertaining. Sure, it isn't the best animation in the world, but there was a lot to enjoy. The animation in general is very good, but not as good as Ratatouille. The story was a little bit thin, and sometimes failed to engage. Most of the jokes were genuinely very funny, however it had a tendency to overshadow the story. The french frogs were also very funny, but my favourite were the singing slugs. They were so funny every time they appeared. The voice talents were fantastic, especially Ian Mckellan, a fine recovery after his mistake, Doogal. Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet also brought a lot of much needed wit to their rather thankless characters. Bill Nighy and Shane Richie also delighted in brief but entertaining roles. The Tom Jones song over the end credits was nice to hear too. All in all, a witty and highly entertaining film. 7.5/10 Bethany Cox