‘Flushed Away’ an enjoyable animated romp

In theaters

FLUSHED AWAY, directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell, written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan and Will Davies, 85 minutes, rated PG.

For some, the new computer-animated movie “Flushed Away” might sound like the logical sequel to Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s remake of “Swept Away,” in which Madge gave the sort of performance that was so poorly received, it essentially plucked the raison from her d’etre. Recently, she proclaimed she will never act in another movie, a promise she shrewdly has kept – at least for now.

“Flushed Away” comes from directors David Bowers and Sam Fell by way of DreamWorks Animation and Aardman Animations.

The latter is the British outfit behind the Academy Award-winning Wallace & Gromit series. Those films were created using stop-motion clay animation, a look and feel “Flush” strives to capture through computer animation. For the most part, they succeed, though there is a smoothness to the production that does steal away at least some of the crude, hands-on charm for which Aardman is known.

As written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan and Will Davies, “Flushed Away” follows the highs and lows of the high-brow pet mouse Roddy (Hugh Jackman), who is left to his own devices at his owners’ Kensington estate when the family goes away for the weekend. For a time, all is well and good for Roddy until the intrusive, abrasive rat Sid (Shane Richie) enters the picture.

Belched loose from the plumbing, Sid turns vicious when he flushes Roddy out of his life so he can take over the estate and at last live the good life.

For Roddy, the life he finds underground is actually a city teeming with sauce and color, particularly thanks to some salty, torch-song-singing slugs, who are given to such piercing fits of fright, they steal a good part of the show.

Below ground, Roddy also meets cute with Rita (Kate Winslet), a slinky rat with a fetching attitude who helms a tugboat called the Jammy Dodger. She is Roddy’s only hope to help him find his way back to the life he knows at street level, which she agrees to do, though naturally there are complications.

Seething in a subplot is Toad (Ian McKellen, terrific), who wants to drown the inhabitants of this sewer haven so he can call it his own. Since he can’t do so without first obtaining a piece of cable Rita uses as a belt (don’t ask), Toad has a fight on his webbed hands, with his amusing posse le Frog (Jean Reno), Spike (Andy Sirkis) and Whitey (Bill Nighy) all along for the ride.

Throughout the movie, you can feel the tug and pull of each studio, with the more cliched, dramatic moments coming from DreamWorks, one suspects, while Aardman shoehorns into the story the sort of quietly revealing character moments we’ve come to expect from them. For audiences, the good news is that the two sensibilities mostly assist the movie, allowing it to achieve a controlled sense of arcane looseness on its way to becoming one of the year’s better animated efforts.

Grade: B+

On DVD

THE DA VINCI CODE, directed by Ron Howard, written by Akiva Goldsman, 158 minutes, rated PG-13.

Here is a movie that has inspired hunger strikes, picketing, accusations of blasphemy, prayer vigils, endless debates. So, at least it began on a promising note.

That said, the idea that it was released at the start of the summer blockbuster movie season should give audiences a solid idea of what to expect – a glossy, special effects-heavy movie first, a provocative hypothesis on the roots of Christianity second.

From Ron Howard, “The Da Vince Code” closely follows the meat of Dan Brown’s book, opening with Louvre curator Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Paul Marielle) rushing through the dark museum before being shot in the gut by an albino monk (Paul Bettany) with an agenda.

Before Sauniere’s stomach acids can poison him, this dying member of the Priory of Sion stumbles around the oddly under-guarded museum and leaves a slew of scrambled clues about the location of the Holy Grail, which if found could lead to a rather damaging, worldwide cover-up by the Roman Catholic Church.

That’s something several people in the movie won’t allow to happen, including a corrupt bishop (Alfred Molina) and the aforementioned monk, each of whom belong to the order Opus Dei.

On the case is Inspector Bezu Fache (Jean Reno), who pulls into his investigation the famed religious symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), who is in Paris promoting his new book when Fache asks him to come to the Louvre.

What Langdon finds is Sauniere, who in his last moments of life also found the strength to carve up his body, stretch out on the Grande Galerie’s parquet floor, and strike a pose that recalls one of Da Vinci’s master works, thus offering yet another clue in a movie nestled in riddles.

French actress Audrey Tautou (“Amelie”) is Sophie Neveu, a police cryptographer and Sauniere’s granddaughter, who alters the course of the movie when she arrives on the scene and warns Langdon that Fache believes he’s the murderer. Together, they escape the museum – itself a miracle given the ease with which they do it – and the movie becomes a thriller in which they are chased throughout Paris, London and Scotland.

Revelations are just where you expect them to be – literally at every turn – with only Sir Ian McKellen as Grail scholar Sir Leigh Teabing allowed to mine a personality. While Hanks and Tautou are boring shells, McKellen understands the story’s pop underpinnings and thus transforms himself into a grinning, leering spectacle whose character needs the assistance of crutches to keep himself upward and mobile.

You know, not unlike the book and this movie.

Grade: C+

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, and Weekends in Television. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.