Flushed With Success

Many cynics say that Hollywood is a cess pit, and argue that filmmakers have been producing their ideas in the little screenwriters' room rather than on a typewriter for some time now. Whatever the case, the jokes about Hollywood's current standards and storylines are likely to flow freely with the unveiling of Dreamworks' and Aardman Animation's new claymation film, Flushed Away, in the fine tradition of their previous collaboration Chicken Run. The story concerns an upmarket London rat (set to be voiced by Hugh Jackman), living in the rodent equivalent of a penthouse apartment, which is flushed down the toilet into the mean streets of the city sewers. The pampered piece of vermin must fend for himself amid the muck against such terrifying foes as a villainous frog (Ian McKellen) and his rat henchman Spike (the vocally dextrous Andy Serkis). It's a cast that brings together some of the very finest actors from X-Men and Lord of the Rings, which goes some way to neutralising the unappetising whiff of the premise, but the instinctive "yuck" factor may be difficult to overcome. Rats, fine singing voice and chiselled jaw or not, just ain't cuddly. Still, with the track record of Dreamworks Animation and Aardman so far, we're not going to bet against rats becoming the must-have pet very soon.