Flushed Away (U)

 

By Nicholas Barber

 

Published: 03 December 2006

Aardman have swapped Plasticene for pixels to make their first computer-animated cartoon, but don't worry: it's still got all the fun, the English eccentricity and the head-spinning Heath-Robinson detail of the Wallace and Gromit films. It even looks familiar. The digital animation does an uncanny job of replicating claymation's textures, and the hero has Wallace's goggling eyes and toothy grin.

 

That hero is Roddy, a pampered pet rat who has the run of a Kensington townhouse. Then his life goes down the toilet, and so does he, and he washes up in the sewers underneath London, where his fellow rats have built a mini-metropolis. It's a place where sandwich boards are made of real bread, and incidental music is provided by whistling slugs. Soon, Roddy is caught up in a battle between a feisty rat-ette, voiced by Kate Winslet, and a toad (Ian McKellen) with a dastardly scheme.

 

Flushed Away is the best cartoon since, well, Wallace and Gromit. The action is a whirling delight, and the script, co-written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, packs in so many puns and visual gags that every joke has one more punchline then you're expecting. My only quibble is the voice-casting of Hugh Jackman as Roddy. After the débâcle of A Good Year, Australians should be banned from using upper-class English accents for quite some time.

 

n.barber@ independent.co.uk

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d7/FAT!.jpg

 

Here are some that made me cringe:

 

Don Cheadle - of Ocean's Eleven , minging attempt at a Cockney accent. Every time he opens his mouth as 'Londoner' Basher Tarr, my ears bleed - it's that bad. "They're sew po-nee that they've gun and bloaaan the back-up grid one by one, like dominoes," he says at one point. If you listen very carefully, you'll even him sound Australian. And the geezer's back for Ocean's Thirteen. Barney Rubble trouble indeed.

 

Sean Connery - It may be The Untouchables that I'm highlighting (in which the legendary Scottish actor played an Irish cop…with a Scottish accent), but let's call it as it is; Sean Connery has used the same movie accent for nigh on forty years now. Irrespective of whether he's playing a Spaniard (in Highlander), a Russian (in The Hunt For Red October) or the aforementioned Irishman helping Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness catch Al Capone. There were parts in the movie where he tried to shift his accent across the Irish sea, but he didn't bother half the time. And his peers didn’t even care; he won an Academy Award for the role.

 

Kevin Costner - In Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, a vast array of accents fill the air, but the funniest is Costner's on-again, off-again 'English' one. It comes and goes quicker than the career of a Big Brother winner. He makes a token gesture to sound non-American which is why you'll laugh until you cry when Californian Costner says: "This is English courage!" Seriously impossible to take any aspect of this film seriously - especially when Alan Rickman's scene-stealing Sheriff Of Nottingham throws a hissy girlie fit and orders: "Cancel Christmas!"

 

Tom Cruise - In Ron Howard's cheesy epic Far And Away, both The Cruiser and ex-wife Nicole Kidman were required to speak with Irish accents. Instead, they fell back on the old Hollywood Oirish standard. There isn't a moment in the entire film where either convinces: "Dere's a gorrrt [goat] over dere," Tom says at one point. "Go improve y'love loife." If you're feeling down, stick this on - as soon as the stars open their mouths, you'll be rolling on the floor laughing. Ireland should demand a personal apology from Tom and Nicole.

Dick Van Dyke - No list presenting minging movie accents is complete without probably one of the most notorious examples of all: lovable 'Cockney' Bert from Disney's famous film. "'Ello Me-ary Poppinz, 'ow arrr yow?" After such an insult, it's a wonder Anglo-US releations weren't set back a hundred years. I think I'd rather listen to nails scrape down a blackboard.

 

Tom Hanks - As Viktor Navorksi, a citizen from the fictitious country of Krakozhia in Steven Spielberg's dramedy The Terminal, Tom Hanks employed a Hollywood interpretation of a generic Eastern European accent; "Nice girl, she von't take your chitting [cheating]." Basically, it amounts to an attempt at pulling off a Russian accent, except that the word "comrades" is omitted. He was about as convincing as Peter Andre playing Hamlet.

 

Julia Roberts - This hugely successful Hollywood actress is a southern belle, born in Atlanta, Georgia. That wouldn't be relevant were it not for the fact that in the melodramatic, eponymously-named Mary Reilly, she stars as an Irish girl...with an American accent. Julia simply couldn't master the Irish brogue: "Where duz dis rage cuooum from?" she says in the movie. More like, where duz dat wack accent come from?

 

Keanu Reeves - Bad accents and Keanu Reeves go together like apple crumble and custard, like peanut butter and jam sandwiches, like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I am absolutely spoilt for choice (and hungry after all those food analogies). Take The Devil's Advocate for example; Keanu plays a lawyer with a bad southern accent. However, his most notorious accent-malfunction is as Englishman Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Labelling it 'disastrous' and 'useless' feels like a gross understatement.

 

Christopher Lambert - In Highlander, Scottish actor Sean Connery plays Spaniard Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez with a Sean Connery accent, and Frenchman Christopher Lambert plays Scot Connor MacLeod with a French accent. And here's the bizarre thing: it doesn't ruin this fantastic movie (unlike Don Cheadle in Ocean's Eleven). And yet, Christopher Lambert belongs on this list; that accent is just plain woeful. "Ah am Coneur MacLeod oeuf ze Clan MacLeod. Ah was born in 1518 in ze village oeuf Glenfinnan on ze shores oeuf Loch Shiel. And ah am e-mmortal." About as Scottish as having a pain au chocolat on Paris' Rue du Croissant.

 

Brad Pitt - Apparently, he spent a week in Belfast researching his role as an IRA terrorist in Hollywood movie The Devil's Own, also starring Harrison Ford. On the evidence of the resulting accent, he probably should've stayed a little longer - like five years. Any American attempting to pull off a Northern Irish accent is doomed to failure; even English, Scottish and Welsh actors get it wrong, so what hope for the Yanks? Pitt's annoying, grating lilt was a welcome distraction as the film was a pile of poo. "Don't look fura happy ending," he says at one point. "It's not an American story. It's an Irish one." Yeah, right.

Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins :lol:

The baddie (someone Price ? ) in the Brosnan film a couple of movies ago that ran the global media company, abysmal accent

The baddie (someone Price ? ) in the Brosnan film a couple of movies ago that ran the global media company, abysmal accent

 

Think it was Jonathon Pryce

Don't forget Peter Sellers' ridiculous French accent in the Pink Panther films.

Think it was Jonathon Pryce

 

Cheers thats the guy ^_^

 

Considering how high-profile he is in the USA nowadays, I thought Clive Owen's accent in Inside Man was really poor :(

 

And the Jonathan Ross show has shown that David Schwimmer blatantly has the worst British accent ever

Don't forget Peter Sellers' ridiculous French accent in the Pink Panther films.

 

Erm, I actually think that's meant to be c**p.... :lol: :lol:

 

You'd may as well criticise Mike Myers' iffy accents in the Austin Powers films.... :P

 

How could anyone fail to mention Keanu Reeves in "Bram Stoker's Dracula".... Hilarious.... :lol:

 

Johnny Depp's 'Sarf Laahndon' copper and Heather Graham's 'Oirish' (unrealistically clean and well coiffeured) tart-with-a-heart in "From Hell" are pretty damned ludicrous as well.... :lol: :lol:

Brad Pitt in 'Seven Years In Tibet' was a dreadful one that no-one's mentioned

Flushed Away (U)

My only quibble is the voice-casting of Hugh Jackman as Roddy. After the débâcle of A Good Year, Australians should be banned from using upper-class English accents for quite some time.

 

n.barber@ independent.co.uk

 

 

added this review as the comment ties the thread into one of the films of the week and you can vote for it now.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8b/Hugh_grant_american_dreamz_2.jpg

 

not seen flushed away yet, but i'm thinking it might be like A Good Year in that Hugh should have been called!!!