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Flushed-away-poster-2

Flushed Away (2006) is an Aardman Animations film, using CGI to duplicate Aardman's trademark Claymation style of animation.

A pet mouse called Roddy St. James (voiced by Hugh Jackman), after a mishap with a sewer rat ends up flushed down from his swank Kensington home into the underworld of vermin beneath London. Desperate to get home, he encounters Rita (voiced by Kate Winslet), who is on the run from a crime lord called The Toad (voiced by Ian McKellen).

Roddy and Rita have several misunderstandings, before he finally earns her forgiveness and trust, and she agrees to take him back to the surface. By the time Roddy returns to his comfortable but rather empty life, he has realized The Toad's true plan: to destroy the rodent underworld with a flood caused by all the humans above flushing their toilets during halftime of The World Cup Final. After foiling the Toad's plan, Roddy discovers that the life in the sewer, which had originally disgusted him, was far more fulfilling than the life he'd had above.


Provides examples of:

Cquote1

 LeFrog: Okay, men! To action!

LeFrog's Men: *Raising both arms* We surrender!

LeFrog: *Annoyed* No! Not that one, you idiots! The Kung-Fu thing!

LeFrog's Men: Aaaah...

Cquote2
Cquote1

 Spike: Careful, Whitey! That's a banana peel!

Cquote2
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar
  • Gilded Cage: Literally.
  • Gilligan Cut
  • Greek Chorus: The slugs. Their songs have some degree of relevance to whatever is currently happening in the story often enough that some of them could be considered narration. The "Bella Notte" parody is a good example.
  • Groin Attack: Roddy has several unfortunate impacts to his nether regions upon arrival in the sewer, hitting his groin on pipes, hammers and other things.
    • Spike as well, during the Chase Scene.
    • Inverted during the Chase Scene when Ladykiller is catapulted backwards and lands crotch-first in Thimblenose Ted's face.
  • Gross-Out Show: Naturally, there's a significant bit of potty humor, given the fact that Roddy arrived from being flushed down the toilet, and most of the film's action takes place in a sewer.
  • He Is Not My Boyfriend
  • Hurricane of Puns
  • I Choose to Stay
  • Irony: In the voiceover commentary, the directors noted multiple times that there's something hilariously ironic about small characters having disproportionately low voices. Also, this bit:
Cquote1

  Mr. Malone: You cheeky little monkey. We Malones never go back on our word! I'll have no son of mine acting The Rat.

Cquote2
  • Lampshade Hanging: See Mood Motif, below.
  • Large Ham: LeFrog. Also, Ian McKellen's ludicrously over-the-top performance is one of the best parts of the movie.
  • Lonely Rich Kid: Roddy is a prime example.
  • MacGuffin: The cable Rita steals from the Toad and subsequently wears as a belt. Also, the ruby the Toad stole from Rita that she steals back.
  • Missing Mom: It's never explained how the Toad got so many children.
  • Missing Trailer Scene: The pair of Roddy's hamster butlers seen in the original trailer are nowhere to be found in the actual film itself. Even more grating in that the butlers do appear in the video game adaptations of the movie.
    • According to the Word of God, they were removed because they made no sense to the plot, and they wanted to stress the fact that Roddy is a loner; the song Dancing with Myself was added late in the production as well.
  • Mistaken for...
  • Mood Motif: spoofed, in an awesome and ridiculously cute fashion.
  • Mouse World
  • My Name Is Not Durwood: After mishearing Roddy's protest of "I'm just an innocent bystander!", many start referring to him as Millicent Bystander. Oh, and Rita's grandmother keeps calling him Tom Jones.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: Roddy doesn't have hamster butlers in the movie.
    • But he does, briefly, in the game.
    • The trailer also give plenty of spotlight to Sid, making it look as if he's a main character. In the actual movie, Sid is a talking Plot Device.
  • No Flow in Claymation: This movie (which was in production before Toy Story) was originally intended to be a traditional claymation movie like Chicken Run, but Aardman couldn't find a way to animate flowing water convincingly in claymation.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Hugh Jackman as Roddy. Only happens once.
  • Parental Bonus
  • Priceless Ming Vase: Roddy accidentally destroys Toad's entire collection of cheap Buckingham Palace gift shop knick-knacks priceless royal family memorabilia.
  • Race For Your Love
  • Red Right Hand: Thimblenose Ted's thimble nose.
  • Road Trip Romance
  • Running Gag: The slugs punctuate several moments throughout the movie, musically and otherwise.
  • Send Me Back
  • Shout Out: Roddy and Toad are voiced by Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellen (who portrayed Wolverine and Magneto in the X-Men films, respectively).
  • Slap Slap Kiss: Roddy and Rita
  • Sorry I Left the BGM On: The slugs provide the Mood Motif of spooky music when Roddy first finds himself in the sewer and is freaked out. They stop when Roddy turns and realizes they're doing it.
    • EVERY TIME music plays in this movie, it's either the slugs or a character doing it. They loved this joke.
    • As the protagonists are sailing away, the ninja frogs pop up menacingly in the foreground of the shot, accompanied by a quick French accordion burst... then one of the frogs turns and continues playing the same accordion, much to the annoyance of the other frogs, who promptly slap him silly.
  • Spaghetti Kiss: Between two slugs during the meal Roddy and Rita share, with a hilarious result!
  • Surrounded by Idiots: The Toad's evil rants are pretty much built on this trope. Le Frog seems to feel this way about his ninja team and definitely feels this way about his cousin the Toad.
  • Taking You with Me: Attempted by the Toad.
  • Those Two Bad Guys: Spike & Whitey.
  • Title Drop
  • Tongue on the Flagpole: The evil Toad and his French cousin Le Frog get their tongues frozen onto a large pipe containing liquid nitrogen after Roddy smashes it apart to freeze the tidal wave Toad sent to drown the rats of Sewer-London. It's implied that the two amphibians were both arrested after they were unfrozen.
  • Took a Level In Badass: Roddy, in spades.
  • To the Bat Noun: "Enough games. To the ratmobile!"
  • Tsundere: Rita. "Ah, the little English girl. So aggressive."
  • What Could Have Been: Sid was originally going to be voiced by Ricky Gervais but he left at some point during pre-production.
  • Wicked Cultured: The Toad, or at least he thinks he is.
  • World of Ham: The sewer.
  • Zombie Gait: Something is... off about Thimblenose Ted. Besides having a thimble for a nose, that is.