Flushed Away is Splendidly Silly

Two years ago, I had the opportunity to savor Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I loved it and was thrilled when I learned that Aardman Animations was working on another movie, this time about a refined mouse who is flushed down into London's sewer system by an uninvited houseguest. Today, I finally saw Flushed Away, and while it's not my favorite of Aardman's film projects - that distinction must go to the phenomenal Chicken Run - it certainly is deserving of accolades.

While I'm used to the somewhat choppy appearance of lovable inventor Wallace, Flushed Away is a work of computer animation rather than claymation, and as such it has a much smoother look to it. Moreover, though I adore Wallace, generally I prefer the non-human Aardman characters to the human ones. They just look better, so I really don't miss the people in this movie. The frogs and toads, with their long, spindly legs and squat bodies, are rather strange-looking, but the mice, of which there are many, look fantastic, and I think the singing, shrieking slugs (none of which, the credits promise, were "a-salted" during the making of this film) are pretty cute.

The main character is Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman), a well-to-do mouse who lives alone in a golden cage in Kensington. When coarse sewer rat Sid (Shane Richie) shows up during his owners' absence, Roddy's attempt to get rid of him goes horribly awry and he winds up taking a wild ride into London's underbelly, where he soon meets up with feisty barge mouse Rita (Kate Winslet), who is being pursued by the Machiavellian Toad (Ian McKellan) and his two flunkies, wisecracking Spike (Andy Serkis) and gentle Whitey (Bill Nighy). All Roddy wants is to get back home, but meanwhile he gets wind of a plot that could destroy the vibrant rodent civilization that has sprung up along the banks of the green river. Can the vile Toad and his sneaky French cousin, Le Frog (Jean Reno), be stopped?

With such an A-list voice cast, the characters spring to fantastic life. McKellan is deliciously over-the-top, Winslet is almost unrecognizably low-class, Jackman is suave and Richie obnoxious. My favorite cast member is Nighy, with his slow, rumbling speech that conveys the henchman's contemplative but slightly dim-witted nature. And every time those slugs shrieked in unison, I squealed in delight.

The action in the hour-and-a-half-long movie is fast-paced, with plenty of humor to spare. I especially like the nods at other films, such as the fact that when Roddy is going through the dollhouse wardrobe, one of the outfits is Wallace's green sweater-vest, white shirt and red tie or that as he is making his rickety way to the sewer, a little orange fish inquires, "Have you seen my dad?"

This is a very silly movie, with more laughs than the marvelous but dry Curse of the Were-Rabbit. If madcap British comedy is your thing and you don't mind the unsanitary setting, Flushed Away is fantastically fun.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End Concludes Trilogy With a Bang

Wednesday night, I sat with my eyes glued to the television screen as the fate of Charlie Pace, one of my most beloved characters on LOST, hung in the balance. Twenty-four hours later, I stared at a much larger screen as another Lord of the Rings alumnus undertook a dangerous mission. There was even swimming involved. Yet another bond between Dom Monaghan and Orlando Bloom. If I hadn't already seen On a Clear Day, I could rent that tomorrow and make it a trilogy of harrowing viewing experiences featuring water and young former Middle-earth residents. But Orlando is the order of the day. Orlando, Keira, Geoffrey... oh, and a fellow by the name of Johnny Depp. Yes, the Black Pearl set sail for its third - and likely final - adventure in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and I was on deck to watch the voyage.

At World's End gets off to a grimly grotesque beginning with lengthy lines of imprisoned pirates being led to a row of gallowses as stodgy British officials stand by. The condemned are surprisingly resigned, offering no resistance, but one lad, still in possession of a hauntingly high choirboy voice, steps up to his spot singing the traditional pirate anthem, and soon all the others have joined in, a gesture of solidarity that sparks an uprising, a last stand of the pirates from around the world against the evils of the East India Trading Company, as led by the sadistically sinister Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander).

The dreariness of the opening gives way to a swashbuckling swordfight involving our old friends Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Will Turner (Bloom) and the recently re-animated Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). A ship and crew is what they're after, since all three want to sail off in search of Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp), whose last encounter with Elizabeth resulted in his death and banishment into Davy Jones' Locker, which for him is a trippy sort of purgatory in which he finds himself commanding a crew of insubordinate clones of himself in one of the film's funniest scenes.

Eventually, of course, Jack is reunited with his comrades, at which point it's off to the pirate council along with eight other key representatives of various geographical ranges. And then things really start to get tricky. There's a whole new cast of characters to keep track of - or not, since it really is the carryover characters we're interested in. The oft-thwarted romance between Elizabeth and Will takes a bit of a backseat for a while in favor of the tragic tale of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and Calypso (Naomie Harris), the sea goddess whose powers the pirates are hoping to release by coming together as one. Because she's so temperamental, there's no guarantee she will agree to ransack Beckett's boats, but it looks like she's their best shot.

With all the characters often motivated by different things, this third installment feels a bit muddled, just as the second did. But the constant action, rousing score, barrage of effects and solid cast make it entertaining, if still not quite as brilliant as Curse of the Black Pearl. It's considerably darker than that first film, and not nearly as hilarious as the trailers suggest, though there are plenty of knee-slapping moments throughout the movie, most involving Jack's faithful crewmembers Pintel (Lee Arenberg) and Ragetti (Mackenzie Crook), the feisty monkey Jack, the strangely elegant Barbossa or Captain Sparrow himself, still weaving drunkenly through his scenes with slurred speech and upper mouth constantly engaged in rabbit-like twitching. There's nothing really to compare with Jack's grand entrance in the first film or his wheel-running antics in the second, but the ship full of Sparrows is wildly amusing, and the extra Jacks continue to pop up over the course of the rest of the movie, along with, on a couple of occasions, Jack's dear old dad, played by Keith Richards in a nice little homage to the inspiration behind our favorite drunken captain.

Beckett remains a consistently creepy presence, seeming far more inherently evil than the swindling but charming Barbossa; Elizabeth's father (Jonathan Pryce) and her former fiance (Jack Davenport) both have fairly brief but crucial roles to play in the plot. Nighy and Harris still have exceptionally annoying voices - or is that just me? The film ends in what feels like a conclusive place for each of our heroes, with some of Jack's funniest lines coming in the last few minutes. Elizabeth and Will, having battled their own demons all along, arrive at an interesting point before we leave them, not quite as ecstatically happily ever after as they could be, perhaps, but in a way that feels satisfying. Incidentally, it's worth it to sit through the credits, since once again patient moviegoers are rewarded with a scene at the end...

I'd rate this at about the same level as the second movie, delivering the sort of zest that fans are seeking but never quite capturing the charm, wit and plotting of the original. But three hours on the high seas with Johnny Depp is always a welcome way to spend an evening, and if they do decide to go for a fourth installment, you can be sure I'll be on board for that as well.

"If There's One Thing an Englishman Knows, It's How to Queue."

That’s what I love about Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; it’s so delightfully British. The series is on my list of books to read. Many of my friends have informed me that I need to read Douglas Adams’ masterpiece, and I suspect they’re right. At least the movie gave me a taste of what to expect. Like many adaptations, I get the sense that this was not entirely successful in its attempt to do justice to the book. But at times, I suspect that the film came pretty close.

When a movie begins with the obliteration of Earth, that’s usually not a good sign – though singing dolphins help to make up for this atrocity. In any case, it’s clear Our Hero, British everyman Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman), isn’t having a very good day. First a crew shows up to knock his house down to make way for a highway, then hundreds of alien ships show up and incinerate his planet to make way for the galactic version of the same thing. But Arthur does have a bit of luck on his side, in the form of Ford Prefect (Mos Def), his upbeat friend who just happens to be an alien aware of Earth’s imminent destruction. Once Ford whisks them off the doomed planet, the real adventure begins.

They soon find themselves the traveling companions of Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell), the egotistical, two-headed Intergalactic president, and his girlfriend, Trillian (Zooey Deschanel), with whom Arthur is not so secretly smitten. I must admit that while I found Arthur endearing and Ford engaging, Trillian was rather annoying to me and Zaphod was just plain obnoxious. I think I would have much preferred the movie without him. But as unsatisfactory as those two characters were, their portly robot shipmate Marvin made up for it. Brilliantly voiced by Alan Rickman, who seems to have a knack for pulling off mournful characters and managed, in my opinion, to make Snape the most intriguing character in the Harry Potter films, this droid possesses all the cheer of Eeyore and never minds letting everyone within earshot know how miserable he is. He was undoubtedly my favorite character in the film, unless one counts a certain instructional manual as a character…

The titular guide was consistently the source of greatest amusement for me. Its witty observations and recollections struck me as so deliciously absurd, I wished it would have appeared even more often than it did. Voiced by Stephen Fry, it also provides the narration for the film, which is excellent and a bit reminiscent of Jude Law in Series of Unfortunate Events, though I think Fry had more opportunity to make the most of his potential for amusement. Little details of the film also provide great mirth, such as the tendency of the hideous Vogons to become so enmeshed in paperwork that they never accomplish anything, or their utilization of poetry as a torture tool. I’m also a fan of the rather daffy Slartibartfast (Bill Nighy), the sullen-looking fellow who shows Arthur the factory where planets are created, and I think the concept of the point-of-view gun is brilliant. Wouldn’t it come in handy to just zap someone with the result that they would instantly understand your point of view? I want one!

Basically, as a comedy, Hitchhiker’s Guide succeeds, though there are lines that fall flat and there were several elements of the film that still didn’t really make sense to my by the end. I don’t think the comedic aspect translated as well as it could have, but it still made for pretty funny viewing. The love story, on the other hand, failed to move me at all. I could have done without it altogether. While Arthur was very loveable, Trillian just didn’t seem his type to me, and I didn’t find any chemistry between them. So go see the movie for a laugh, and keep an ear out especially for Marvin and the Guide. I don’t know that it’s everything Douglas Adams would have wanted it to be, but I doubt he’s rolling over in his grave.