Flushed Away

Last week Ginger and I watched Flushed Away. It's a combo of Aardman Animations (responsible in part for such classics like Wallace and Gromit) and Dreamworks (who are just milking their one animation hit Shrek while putting out a lot of other stuff that's crap). So what you get is something with some in jokes and the occasional quirky humor like Wallace and Gromit, but that's been commercialized and dumbed down like Shark Tale and Over The Hedge (both of which, to be fair have their moments, but don't feel worthy of carrying an entire movie). So how does Flushed Away rate, I'm going to say average to slightly below average for the most part. I'm sure there are a lot of jokes I just didn't get (like England losing on penalty kicks, not sure why that's suppose to be funny). The animation is good enough, but nothing really special these days. And the plot is cookie cutter and dialog bland and predictable. Pretty sure Ginger didn't really care for it too much. She doesn't like a lot of animation stuff normally, so any animation that's just phoning it in isn't going to strike her fancy. I found it passable, so it gets a "meh" rating. I did find myself almost zoning out at times and almost falling asleep because a lot of times even the action sequences just feel like they're filler to get to the next act. And initially they go overboard on the fact that they're in a sewer so there are a lot of poop jokes. Overall, I'm glad we only rented it and didn't buy it. If you really like animated films, then you won't hate it, but if you really need something special in an animated film, this one you might want to give a pass.