Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet star in Flushed Away, the latest in a long line of animated anthropomorphic animal movies. There is such a pile of this genre that you can't keep up with them, and they become indistinguishable from one another. Flushed Away at least attempts to distinguish itself from the crowd by not going for the over-the-top, gross-out joke with the hint of adult innuendo. Instead, it's focused more on plot and story. There's humor here, but it fits in the context of the story with cleverness and not simply as an isolated joke.
Flushed Away opens with a pampered pet rat, put out by an intruding sewer rat who flushes him into London's rat society. There, Roddy (Jackman) encounters Rita (Winslet), a scrappy scavenger with a family bond unlike Roddy has ever experienced. The two are imperiled together in a madcap race to defeat The Toad (Ian McKellen) and his henchrats and henchfrogs--before they flood the sewers.
All of the voice actors give winning performances and the animation is in the Wallace and Gromit style because it's from the same production company, Aardman. It's fast-paced, interesting, and the minutae of the devices used by the rats--from paperclips to duty-free shopping bags--makes for an extra layer of fun. Grade: B
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