Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Flushed Away

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Posted by Kara Tillotson (Member # 3899) on 11-03-2006, 08:50 PM:

I ongly got to see part of it bec I had to help with concession, but I love the Slugs throughout the movie. The little references to movies like W&G and The wererabbit were great. The house mouse had a stuffed Gromit in his humans bedroom.

Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 11-03-2006, 09:53 PM:

I found the shell-less snails to be the worst part. Like everyone is automatically supposed to find it funny. Ok movie, but I liked SC3 better.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-04-2006, 12:56 PM:

Location: Carmike 8, Lawton, OK
Auditorium: #6
Format: Christie DLP, 1998 X 1080 pixels, LPCM 5.1 audio

Flushed Away was a pretty good movie. Not perfect, but worth watching at least once. Incidentally, I have no desire at all to see Santa Clause 3. I didn't even bother with the second one.

I think some viewers may be thrown by the animation style of this movie. It's all CGI, but Aardman Studios has tried very hard to imitate the stop motion look of its Oscar-winning clay-mation efforts. I don't think the imitation is entirely successful, but the jerky motion gives some of the characters, such as "Le Frog" (voiced by Jean Reno), an added bit of humorous energy. The show isn't up to Pixar standards, but there are a few scenes that may impress fans of computer animation.

Ian McKellen steals much of the movie as The Toad, an underworld amphibian mob boss amongst rodents. He has a plot to wipe them out and replace them with thousands of his baby offspring, which seem like a cross between tadpoles and piranhas. The energy McKellen puts into The Toad reminded me of the Oogie Boogie character from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Like most Aardman efforts, this show is funny in a broad manner, but will appeal more to a crowd that understands British culture. Some of the humor may go over the heads of young kids.

Presentation quality: the projection looked really good, but looked a bit soft during the end titles. The semi serif font Friz Quadrata is difficult to resolve if there are any limits in resolution. I did laugh at the caption "no slugs were a-salted in the making of this movie." I took a peek at The Prestige, a true anamorphic widescreen movie projected on film. That show looked sharper in detail, but not as evenly bright and flicker free. I think that at least backs up my opinion that live action movies should continue to be shot on film regardless of the methods used in projecting them.

Sound quality was good. This isn't a very aggressive audio mix. However, it had a smooth, full bodied tone.

Three out of four stars.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-09-2006, 10:12 PM:

Pretty good. The slugs reminded me a lot of the mice in "Babe."

The movie has a clever story. I thought it was far better than "Wallace and Gromit." By the end I had almost forgotten about Sid the sewer rat and enjoyed the "easter-egg" style ending. Very cool. Also following that up with "What's New Pussycat" by Tom Jones was a hilarious touch and made for great exit music. Little kids dancing on the way out of the movie - always a good sign.

We received a "Ratatouille" trailer with this film, but I have a policy against playing trailers featuring the same species of animals as in the feature film.

3.75 out of 5 for me.

Posted by Paul Burt (Member # 3743) on 11-28-2006, 11:14 AM:

I thought this was the most enjoyable of this years crop of animated films. Visually inventive, good gags, including some subtle ones for the adults in the audience, great use of music, and the very cool singing slugs.

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 11-29-2006, 10:08 PM:

CINEMA: Megaplex 20 at The District, South Jordan, UT
AUDITORIUM: 2
PRESENTATION: Dolby Digital Cinema DLP
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: None, I suppose
RATING: Three stars (out of four)

Ticket Seller, an elderly woman with an oxygen hose attached to her nostrils, took it upon herself to choose my seats for me (it's a reserved seating auditorium). Surprisingly, she gets the row exactly right and is only one seat off. Like it mattered...there were six customers total, which is probably why she dispensed with the selecting of seats.

The whole "reserved seating" concept is kind of growing on me.

By "I suppose", I mean the credits had rainbow effects. The feature itself looked great, but this screen is a little too big for the application. You could make out pixels in some rounded shapes. I suppose you'd have to be looking for them, but...

I liked the movie quite a bit better than "Wallace and Gromit". The slugs, in particular, were a lot of fun. It took me awhile to figure out what the rodents were actually supposed to BE, though.