“Flushed Away”: An Inventive Animated Adventure
Not quite a fairy tale, and certainly not a comedy, “Flushed Away” is a purely adventurous animated film that delights the eye primarily with its inventive staging. The sewer (or канализационное) existence of rats, mice, frogs, and snails has provided a rich impulse for the imagination of directors Sam Fell and David Bowers. All sorts of junk and scrap (from socks and underwear to flying mixers and floating umbrellas) fill the computer-generated world with pleasant surprises, constantly refreshing and amusingly playing on disproportions.
Visual Gags and Familiar Tropes
“Huge” underpants become a parachute for a small “mouse” in human form.
Another clever aspect is the purely “human” plot, even though the rodents and amphibians are convincingly drawn. The beginning of the film vaguely resembles “The Prince and the Pauper,” where a domestic mouse and a sewer rat swap places. It continues like “Pippi Longstocking” – the mouse meets the red-haired Rita, a child of the underworld with pirate tendencies, and they begin a “feuding” romance. Then, something like “Thumbelina” kicks in: the lovers flee, pursued by a toad and his frog cousin. “Thumbelina” is recalled because the theme of loneliness is subtly conveyed. But everything is resolved in a strictly “modern” manner, and behind each of the characters, one can recognize not fairy-tale characters, but heroes of the latest action films. The degree of “adventurousness” is like in “Romancing the Stone” (1984) (there’s even a ruby here, by the way), Rita’s fighting nature is not inferior to Lara Croft, and the toad is impersonating all the planetary villains from all the Bond series at once.
Assimilating Cinematic History
It’s interesting to watch because the new generation of animation easily assimilates all the accumulated “living” achievements. If in the Batman universe, the “penguin” sewer required almost theatrical convention, in “Flushed Away,” the underground world organically joins the well-known “acidic” “post-apocalyptic” worlds of Blade and Nirvana. Only with flying mixers. And the film doesn’t parody, but rather recreates with its own means the giant frozen wave from “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004). And the inclusions of musicals with snails under umbrellas are no less vivid than in live musicals. And the light over the artificial city with various strange creatures corresponds to “Star Wars.” And some Tom Cruise probably couldn’t compete with the “waterfall” adventures in the toilet, although they add adrenaline – you bet.
Missed Opportunities for Deeper Meaning
One can only regret the authors’ excessive enthusiasm for the animated “matter” at the expense of “soulful conversations.” That is, their visual and technical potential is no less than that of Miyazaki, but there is less meaning. “Flushed Away” clearly shows how harmful Hollywood “family-friendliness” is to talented people. Everything leads to forcibly falling into childhood. And the invented sewer system, in contrast to the glamorous world of the Kensington mansion with completely charming dolls, allowed for a much more significant, caustic, and sarcastic “human” plot, convertible by age. That is, children wouldn’t be bored, but adults wouldn’t be bored either. In short, the film lacked torn condoms as sleeping bags – it lacked healthy cynicism.
The Voice Cast
The original voice cast is also important. The names of Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Sir Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Andy Serkis, and Bill Nighy, who spoke for the rats and frogs, evoke so many associations that much more meaning could have been extracted from them. It was a sin not to take advantage of this.