Animation from the Aardman Studios, not claymation, like their signature Wallace and Gromit series (and not Nick Park directing), but instead compliant, acquiescent computer animation, and a compliantly, acquiescently crasser and cruder sense of humor to go along with it. (Traces of which began to creep into the feature-length Wallace and Gromit outing a year earlier.) The basic plot premise: a housebound tux-wearing pet mouse, in his owner's absence, gets dispossessed by an intrusive sewer rat, literally flushed down the loo, to discover an alternative, miniature London in the underground, plus a feisty feminist mouse, a villainous toad and his toadies, a French-accented frog (get it?), among others. The trademark ping-pong-ball eyes are still in place, although all sign of a human touch in the modelling of the figures has been smoothed out, and the three-dimensionality -- the light and shade and all the rest -- is blatantly counterfeit, and the total effect is markedly less distinctive. Still, a good deal of skill went into it, in matters of pacing and timing and elementary draftsmanship. Hitting the hero in the nuts in a variety of ways in rapid succession is almost as ingenious as it is low. Almost. With the voices of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Bill Nighy; directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.