Review : Flushed Away

Flushed Away An uptown pet rat that gets flushed down the toilet from his penthouse apartment, ending in the sewers of London, where he has to learn a whole new and different way of life.



So I think the thing I find when watching Flushed Away is that young audiences from the age of say 4 - 12 years will definitely want to watch this animated adventure from Aardman and Dreamworks.

Not surprisingly, considering the title, it's got lots of toilet humor, eh? see what I did there.  The storyline revolves around an upper class pet rat from Kensington who gets flushed down a toilet into a grobby sewer, and there are references to human waste, including one scene in which a character appears to grab a piece of excrement. There is lots action in this and lots of humours and comical cartoon violence, for instance characters fall from high places and are shot at, chased, frozen, electrocuted, yelled at, and threatened.

When it comes to stand out characters, you have a superb villain in 'The Toad' who acts in everyway like an evil villain with a formidable plan, and Sid is a disgusting unhigenic character who belches, farts, and is generally crude. On the other hand, you have someone like Rita who is an independent girl who can fend for herself and seeks adventure in her boat 'The Jammie Dodger'.

So I think the question with any film, not just this is 'Is it any good?';  I think Flushed Away is a very good film, which can extend to appeal to an audience with viewers of all ages, and if you can dismiss the crude humor in it, and pass it off as being playful in the story telling, it has an imaginative storyline and amusing characters which you can really invest in throughout the course of the film, There are three funny little slugs who are easily frightened but they represent classic Aardman Animations characters, very similar to previous Aardman characters in 'Creature Comforts'.

There's also a hidden underlined message in this which is: "It's a big world out there, if you're willing to venture out of your comfort zone and experience it." I think that's a good message to uphold, especially when you are appealing to children in their early teens. I do belive and this is the case of something that has happened to me in previous experience, whenever we as human beings find something hard and challenging we tend to not do it, we just back under the safty blanket of our comfort zone and I think that's wrong; you should push yourself to do things that you would not see yourself doing, everything is an experience and you learn a lot from it, so why not? what have we all got to loose?

Keeping it short on this one, overall I think that this film is very enjoyable, and playful in it's comedy elements but also educates it's veiwers and appeals more to those of a younger generation in terms of preparing them for the realities of life. It's a big world, how are you going to know what it's like? Go out and experience it. 9/10

NEXT : Muppet Treasure Island.