Film Reviews

Flushed Away

• Rating:
• Director: Sam Fell
• Starring: Ian McKellen
• Details: US / US / 90mins (G).

The tagline for Flushed Away is 'Someone's Going Down' but it really should be 'Guaranteed: No Boring Bits' as Flushed Away is, arguably, the best fun a kid can have at the flicks this year. Roddy (Jackman) is an uptown mouse, living the good, if secluded, life in a cage in a posh Kensington home. When a boorish mouse called Sid (Shane Ritchie) flushes Roddy down the toilet, he finds himself in another world - Ratropolis, an underworld city run by the gangster rats and headed up by the evil The Toad (McKellen).There, Roddy is unwittingly dragged into a struggle between the feisty sewer-boat captain Rita (Winslet) and her race against The Toad for a priceless ruby. The directors employed a rock soundtrack to give the storyline an extra zip - but in actuality, the story does that all on its own. It never stops, not for a second, as you are breathlessly swept up into the world Fell and Bowers have created; not that they give you a chance to sit back and take a look around, as crazy stunts and great action sequences abound. When Roddy and Rita aren't racing through the tunnels at top speed, there are enough witty, sarcastic and dry one-liners to keep the pulse racing until the next action sequence. There are so many other characters that could have got a movie of their own: the slugs who enjoy a good sing along (at inappropriate moments), the Ray Winstone-esque Whitey (Nighy) and the dreaded French cousin of The Toad - Le Frog (Reno).

Review by Gavin Burke