Flushed Away is a 2006 British-American computer-animated action-adventure comedy film directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell, produced by Cecil Kramer, David Sproxton, Peter Lord, and written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan and William Davies. It is the third and final film to be co-produced by Aardman Animations and DreamWorks Animation following Chicken Run (2000) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), and was Aardman's first completely computer-animated feature as opposed to their usual stop-motion standard. The film stars the voice talents of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Andy Serkis, Bill Nighy, Ian McKellen, Shane Richie and Jean Reno. It is DreamWorks Animation's 13th feature film.
The film was released in US on 3 November 2006 and in UK on 1 December 2006 and was distributed by Paramount Pictures. Despite receiving positive reviews from critics, Flushed Away underperformed at the box office, prompting DreamWorks to end their partnership with Aardman. The film received nominations for the BAFTA Award and Critics' Choice Award for Best Animated Feature. It also got 8 nominations at the 34th Annie Awards, winning a leading 5, including Writing in a Feature Production.
Production[]
The idea for a film about rats which fall in love in a sewer was proposed by animator Sam Fell during the production of Aardman Animation's Chicken Run (2000). At the time, Aardman encouraged everyone at the company to come up with ideas for features for the DreamWorks partnership. Fell, development executive Mike Cooper, and producer Peter Lord then developed the concept into a story before pitching it to DreamWorks. Lord described the pitch as "The African Queen with the gender roles reversed." Comic writing duo, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were contracted to write the script for the film, which went under the working title of Ratropolis.
Traditionally, Aardman have used stop-motion for their animated features, but it is complex to render water with this technique, and using real water can damage plasticine models. It would have been expensive to composite CGI into shots that include water, of which there are many in the movie, so they chose to make Flushed Away their first all-CGI production. This is the third and final of three Aardman-produced films released by DreamWorks. Aardman's experience with DreamWorks during the making of the film led to a split between the two studios.
Reception[]
Critical response[]
Flushed Away has a 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 6.7/10 based on 131 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads "Clever and appealing for both children and adults, Flushed Away marks a successful entry into digital animated features for Aardman Animations." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 74, indicating "generally favorable reviews."
Box office[]
Flushed Away collected $64,488,856 in the United States, which was below the average of other CGI films from DreamWorks Animation, and $111,814,663 from international markets for a worldwide total of $176,319,242. The film opened to number three in its first weekend, with $18,814,323, behind Borat and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. Produced on a budget of $149 million, poor box office reception resulted in a $109-million write-down for DreamWorks Animation, and in a termination of the partnership with Aardman Animations.
Trivia[]
- The reason why the film was animated in CGI instead of stop-motion is because the film heavily features water, whis would've been extremely difficult to replicate in stop-motion.
- In Tabetha's room, there is a large doll resembling Gromit from the Wallace and Gromit franchise.
- Originally, the film was going to be about pirates, but DreamWorks told Aardman that pirate films aren't marketable anymore. This was before Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean films came out in the theaters.
- This is the first Aardman's computer-animated film.
- This is the first Aardman film to be rated PG by the MPAA.
- The third DreamWorks Animation film to not feature any humans, after Antz and Shark Tale.
- This is the first DreamWorks Animation film to be released in November, followed by Bee Movie.
- The last DreamWorks Animation film to be co-produced by Aardman before they went their separate ways in 2007 due to creative differences.
- This is the second DreamWorks Animation film to be distributed by Paramount Pictures.
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