Flushed Away


Flushed Away is a 2006 animated adventure comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation SKG and Aardman Features. The film was directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell, and written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan and Will Davies. The film stars the voices of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Shane Richie, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis and Jean Reno. In the film, a fancy rat named Roddy St. James is flushed down the toilet in his Kensington apartment and befriends a scavenger named Rita Malone in order to get back home while evading a sinister toad.
Flushed Away was the third and final DreamWorks and Aardman co-production following Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Director Fell conceived the concept of rats falling in love in the sewers while working on Chicken Run. In 2001, Fell developed a story and pitched it to DreamWorks. The project was announced in July 2002, followed by comedy writing duo Clement and La Frenais being contracted to write the script, which had the working title Ratropolis. In 2003, Bowers joined Fell as co-director. It was the first Aardman project made primarily in CGI animation instead of using their usual claymation – this was because using water on plasticine models could damage them.
The film's premiere was held on 22 October 2006 during the Tokyo International Film Festival, followed by a wide release in the United States by Paramount Pictures on 3 November 2006, and in the United Kingdom by UIP on 1 December. It received positive reviews from critics, but was a box-office disappointment, grossing $178 million against a $149 million production budget, resulting in an estimated loss of $109 million for the studios. The failure led to Aardman ending its collaboration deal with DreamWorks. The film received nominations for the BAFTA Award and Critics' Choice Award for Best Animated Feature. It received eight nominations at the 34th Annie Awards, winning five, including for the screenplay and, for McKellen, Voice Acting.

Plot

Roddy St. James is a pet rat who lives in a large Kensington apartment. After his owners go on vacation, he takes advantage of being alone. That night, a sloppy sewer rat named Sid bursts out of the kitchen’s sink and decides to stay and watch the 2006 FIFA World Cup final. Imagining Sid taking over his life, Roddy demands Sid to leave, but Sid refuses and starts to treat him as a butler. He decides to take advantage of this and attempts to trick Sid into thinking that the apartment’s Jacuzzi-brand toilet is an actual Jacuzzi. Despite being sloppy, Sid knows about toilets. He pretends to be tricked before pushing Roddy into the water and pulling the lever. After landing in London’s sewer, he discovers Ratropolis, a sewer city made out of various bits of junk, resembling London.
He is told to seek out Rita Malone, an enterprising scavenger who works the drains in her boat, the Jammy Dodger and who might be able to help him get home. Roddy and Rita are abducted by rats, Spike and Whitey and brought before their boss, the Toad, as Rita stole back a ruby that was scavenged by her father. The Toad has a deep hatred of rodents to the point of hateful obsession. He plans to have Roddy and Rita frozen with liquid nitrogen, but the pair escape. Rita takes the ruby, and a unique electric master cable needed to control Ratropolis' sewer floodgates.
Roddy deduces that the ruby is actually a glass replica and easily breaks it, enraging Rita, who attacks him. Roddy offers Rita a real ruby if she takes him back to Kensington, to which she agrees. The pair stop to visit her family before setting off. During Roddy's stay, Rita’s younger brother, Liam, proposes to her and their father that they give Roddy to the Toad in exchange for money, but Rita and their father refuse to. Overhearing this, Roddy misinterprets that Rita wants to sell him out, so he reneges on the deal and steals the Jammy Dodger. When Rita catches up to him, she clears up the misunderstanding. The pair evade pursuit from Spike, Whitey, and their accomplices.
Incensed at his henchmen's failures, the Toad sends for his French cousin, Le Frog. The Toad recounts to Le Frog how his hatred of rodents originated, which he has told to Le Frog multiple times: Fifty years before the events of the film, the Toad was Prince Charles' favorite pet out of all of his pets. They did many things together until Charles’ birthday, where he was given a rat as a gift. Over time, Charles no longer favored the Toad and a one of his servants flushed the Toad down a toilet. Le Frog and his henchmen intercept Roddy and Rita to retrieve the cable, but the duo manages to escape out of the sewer drain and back to Roddy's apartment in Kensington, though the Jammy Dodger is destroyed.
Roddy delivers Rita the promised ruby as well as an emerald to build a new Jammy Dodger, then shows her around his apartment. She at first believes he has family but notices his cage and realizes he is a pet and alone. Rita tries to persuade Roddy to come with her, but he is too proud to admit his loneliness. Rita leaves the apartment by flushing herself down the toilet only for her to be kidnapped, with the Toad taking back the master cable. Roddy joins Sid to watch the game. When Sid warns him not to drink too much before half-time, he realizes that the Toad plans to open the floodgates during half-time, when every human in London will use their toilets, allowing the wave of drainage to wash away every rat in Ratropolis. Roddy entrusts Sid with his home and has Sid flush him down the toilet again. He frees Rita, and together they defeat the Toad and his henchmen by getting Toad and Le Frog's tongues stuck to moving gears and freezing the wave of drainage with liquid nitrogen. Hailed as a hero, Roddy agrees to stay in Ratropolis with Rita. Soon after, the two, as well as Rita's family, set off on the Jammy Dodger II.
In a mid-credits scene, when Tabitha, the daughter of Roddy's owners, finds Sid on the couch after she and her parents return from vacation, she introduces him to their new cat, much to his horror.

Voice cast

  • Hugh Jackman as Roddy St. James, a pampered pet rat who lives in a Kensington luxury apartment with a wealthy British family. He is flushed down the toilet by Sid the sewer rat into the sewer drains.
  • Kate Winslet as Rita Malone, a street-wise and rather aloof scavenger rat and the oldest child of her large family. She is the captain of the Jammy Dodger and Roddy's love interest.
  • Ian McKellen as the Toad, a tyrannical, pompous, and aristocratic cane toad who wants to get rid of the entire population of Ratropolis to make room for his hundreds of offspring. For his performance, Ian McKellen won the Annie Award for Voice Acting in a Feature Production.
  • Jean Reno as Le Frog, the Toad's annoyed French cousin. He refers to the Toad as "my warty English cousin". He masters martial arts and is the leader of a team of hench-frogs.
  • Andy Serkis as Spike, one of the Toad's two top hench-rats. He is the quicker-witted and more aggressive of the two.
  • Bill Nighy as Whitey, another of the Toad's two top hench-rats. Whitey is an albino rat, and Spike's partner. Unlike Spike, Whitey is sympathetic and less vicious but is also ignorant and gullible.
  • Shane Richie as Sid, an over-weight and lazy sewer rat from the sewer drain. He is the one who flushes Roddy down his own toilet and is an acquaintance of Rita and her family.
  • David Suchet and Kathy Burke as Mr. and Mrs. Malone respectively, Rita's parents
  • Miriam Margolyes as Grandmum Malone, Rita's grandmother who has a crush on Roddy mistaking him for Tom Jones.
  • Christopher Fairbank as Thimblenose Ted, another hench-rat who serves as the Toad's third-best enforcer after Spike and Whitey.
  • * Fairbank also voices the cockroach living in the Malone household.

    Production

The idea for a film about rats that fall in love in sewers was proposed by animator Sam Fell during the production of Aardman Animation's Chicken Run. At the time, Aardman encouraged everyone at the company to come up with ideas for features for the DreamWorks partnership. In 2001, Fell, along with development executive Mike Cooper, and producer Peter Lord developed the concept into a story before pitching it to DreamWorks. The film was first announced in July 2002, and in what was then a surprise move, it was revealed as being Aardman's very first CGI feature project. Lord described the pitch as "The African Queen with the gender roles reversed.". After the film was announced, Comic writing duo Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were contracted to write the script, which had the working title Ratropolis. In 2003, David Bowers joined in to direct the film with Fell. Other writers were also later brought in to help write the script, including Frasier writers Christopher Lloyd and Joe Keenan, and Twins and Johnny English writer William Davies.
Traditionally, Aardman had used stop-motion for their animated features, but it was complex to render water with this technique, and using real water could damage plasticine models. It would have also been expensive to composite CGI into shots that include water, of which there are many in the movie, so the company 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 turbulent experience with DreamWorks during the making of this film and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit led to the split between the two studios.

Soundtrack

On Halloween 2006, the Flushed Away: Music from the Motion Picture soundtrack was released by Astralwerks.

Home media

Flushed Away was released on DVD on 20 February 2007. It includes behind-the-scenes, deleted info, Jammy Dodger videos and all-new slug songs. It was released in the UK on 2 April 2007, where it was also packaged with a plasticine 'Slug Farm' kit. The film was released on Blu-ray by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment on 4 June 2019 around the world except for the UK. As of October 2010, 4.9 million units were sold.
In July 2014, the film's distribution rights were purchased by DreamWorks Animation from Paramount Pictures and transferred to 20th Century Fox before reverting to Universal Studios in 2018, following NBCUniversal's 2016 acquisition of DreamWorks Animation.