? A snooty house
mouse (voice of Hugh Jackman) named Roddy finds his comfortable life in a
gilded cage literally going down the toilet. Forced to mingle with the huddled
mouses, he teams up with a street-wise working-class rodent (Kate Winslet) who
lives on a boat to fend off a megalomaniacal toad (Ian McKellan). Reflecting
the studios that produced it, the computer-animated characters look like a
cross between those in Shrek and in Wallace & Gromit.
+ The
beneath-the-streets-of-London setting colorfully evokes the idea of a hidden
world, below the human one, where mice think twice before leaving. Little
touches, like the way the frogs use their tongues as weapons, or the endearing
little slugs that form makeshift Greek choruses to comment on the action, make
this slightly above average. Although kids shouldn’t have trouble following the
action, there are amusing little tidbits for the older folks, like Roddy’s Tom
Jones imitation, the Batman-inspired TV-style graphic, or the way the
villain’s French cousin is literally a “frog.” Or a toad, anyway. Amusing
creatures, either way.
- Aside from the
slugs, the characters are the same sort you see in just about every
family-oriented animation, and the story arc is pretty much the same as in Open
Season, which came out all of five weeks earlier. Yes, once again it’s the
plot about the domesticated animal learning to enjoying life on the outside.
= *** A modest winner
for the kids that won’t bore the adults.
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