Me whining about my job is like the dude who’s banging Jessica Alba complaining about his relationship. I show up to work late. I watch movies. There’s a bar right next door to the Mercury offices, and we have dogs here. I play videogames and I read comics and I call it “research.” It is shamefully, awesomely cush. But here’s the thing: When kids’ movies screen, they screen in Tigard, on Saturdays, at 10 am—an unholy hour in which I’m either drooling into my pillow or wincing through a hangover while watching cartoons on the Kids’ WB. But, dear Mercury readers, I have devoted myself to this strenuous job, and I will suffer through it, for you. So yes. Saturday. Tigard. 9:30 am. Flushed Away.
Despite my bleary eyes and Friday night’s clothes, I was admittedly stoked—Flushed Away‘s the latest from Aardman Animations, the great stop-motion studio behind last year’s brilliant Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. This time around, the British Aardman’s teamed up with DreamWorks, they of the execrable Shrek films, for the CG Flushed Away. The characters and premise are likeable and fun: A spoiled pet rat gets flushed down his posh London toilet, ending up in a chaotic sewer world where adventure dutifully ensues. And the voice cast—Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, and Ian McKellen—is exemplary.
But Flushed Away squanders most of that—while there’s Aardman wit here, there’s also lazy, DreamWorks-esque writing; for every joke that zings, more thud or flop. And despite all of the fast-paced hijinks that Flushed Away crams in, it all blends into a so-so blur. There are flashes of smarts and fun, but all they end up doing is making one wish that this was a real Aardman picture—one focused on cleverness and character rather than emulating the breakneck, scattershot tone of most American children’s films. Or maybe I’m just being grumpy. Because I was watching it in Tigard. On a Saturday. At 10 am.
