Flushed Away (06, David Bowers and Sam Fell)

2006 was really the year of the rodent for kiddie cinema. Between Pixar's Ratatouille and this, we'll be moused out until the yearly trip to Disneyworld! In any case, taking the team from Aardman and giving them full rein with computer animation ends up disappointing simply because Aardman danced circles around every other animation company in the world with their last Wallace and Gromit movie. Maybe I'm just a sucker for stop motion, but the animation here has a drastic lack of personality in comparison. Character designs retain that Aardman look but lack the small touches (for example, something as simple as eye movement) that make the W&G flicks such a blast to look at. The environments also end up being pretty ubiquitous, seeming like stock backgrounds they didn't use for any number of other CG animated flicks. In a similar vein, the story ends up becoming rather standard for this kind of flick, losing some (but not all) of the English humor that makes the other flicks so refreshing. Laughs do come here and there, mostly from Jean Reno and his team of French frogs. The other actors are pretty unremarkable. Who thought Hugh Jackman's live action acting had enough personality to give him voice work? Ditto for Kate Winslet. Ian McKellen fares a bit better, but it's a moot point when the writing for his character isn't there. I really wanted to get into this, but I could have just as easily rented Wallace and Gromit or Chicken Run and grinned until it hurt rather than sit through something comparable to the latest Dreamworks cashgrab. Oh wait, this was a Dreamworks cashgrab. ** and 1/2 * out've *****