Flushed Away

[ShyViolet]

Hey Ben, did you say "lame connections"?

I can think of a million of those in lieu of DW films bashing:

Here's one:

Bee Movie/Andre and Walle B


Because, see, they both have bees in them!!

[Meg]

I found the Wallace and Gromit movie to be a disappointment, too, as I love the short films with them, but thought Curse of the Were-Rabbit was a bit of a snoozer.

Yeah, me too. I actually liked Flushed Away better. I know everyone was raving about CotWR, but...I dunno. Didn't work for me.

(I adore the shorts though - got 'em a DVD a year or two ago. )

[ShyViolet]

BTW, for folks knocking the animation, something I didn't quite mention in the review as such was that this is a quiet little breaktrhough, making CGI mimic the kinetic look of stop-motion.

Oh yeah...the animation was one of my FAVORITE things. (usually I don't pay THAT much attention to the animation in a film, at least when watching it for the first time. I mean I do, but not in a HUGE HUGE, way. I mostly just concentrate on the story and voices )

It just looked so beautiful, so adorable, they looked like toys or clay figures you could just pose!

And I loved Rita's jeans, and her sweater!


I really didn't feel the whole "clash of cultures" thing in the film that so many critics were talking about (and I thought I would, especially from watching the trailer.)

I don't know, everything just seemed to fit. It was, like one critic said in a positive review, kind of like peanut butter cup--gives you the best of both worlds in an awesome combination.

[cmoon]

Finally saw this film and can't think of where else to share my opinion.

I fully understand coming from low expectations and then finding that FA is a surprisingly enjoyable film, but I can't agree with so many others here that this is up to Aardman's standards. There's a lot of room for opinion here--I tend not to care for a lot of the Dreamwork's animated films so there's that bias to begin with (their humor rubs me the wrong way.) And of course, who isn't quick to yell out that we'd rather have the traditional Aardman animation than what we have here which looks very substandard compared to (yes, you guessed it) Pixar films.

That aside though, FA suffers most (I think anyway) from a -very- pedestrian plot that is mostly obscured by the weird/surreal settings. So taking all this together you might think I hated the film which isn't true. I really enjoyed it, and found myself laughing quite a bit, but at the end of the day felt it was still a low water-mark for Aardman. If the DW/Aardman partnership is still on, I can only hope that we'll see more films that have less of DW's involvement.

[Ben]

Nope, DWs and Aardman split a year ago (after Flushed Away was flushed away).

Aardman now have a deal with Sony Pictures, who seem to be leaving them to their own devices.