The film was as beautiful as I could have hoped for from a Dreamworks picture, while maintaining the Aardman style. The voice acting was done very well, especially from Ian McKellen. There were some really brilliant things in the film, and I would say that most of them deal with slugs. I had a good time and, even though it didn't feature my favorite characters, it still had a style and invention that brought something fresh to the screen. Sadly, my only complaint is that the characters did not create enough of a compelling story to make me fall in love with the film. The same way that a child will always call an orange fish Nemo or an elephant Dumbo, I doubt they will be calling rats Roddy or Rita.
Release Date: November 3, 2006
The Upside: A fun and humorous animated film.
The Downside: Not spectacular, not too much to fall in love with.
On the Side: According to Peter Lord, co-founder of Aardman, this film's original concept involved pirates, and was pitched to Dreamworks soon after the release of Chicken Run (2000). However, Aardman were told that there was no market for pirate films (this was before Pirates of the Caribbean was made), and were told to modernize the concept. By the time the writers had done this, the project was temporarily shelved to make way for the production of Wallace & Gromit in Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Overall Grade: C+
Brian Gibson is the Associate Editor of Film School Rejects.
Article comments
1 - Bliffle
This sounds like one of the dumbest movies ever, so I won't see it.