Flushed Away (2006)

The very starting premise of a rat going down a toilet turned me off, but an acquaintance assured me the excremental gags are very few and relatively tasteful. He also found the movie moderately funny, especially for the running(?) gag of a cappella slugs. I still didn't get the gumption to watch until Netflix said it would stop streaming at the end of the month.

In modern Kensington, ratty Roddy (Hugh Jackman, playing at least two Brits that year) seems to enjoy life as a pet who gets the ritzy apartment to himself for most of the day. Then a slovenly sewer rat (Shane Richie) moves in, and Roddy's attempt to return him to the sewer backfires. Roddy ends up in a bustling underground town with a mostly rodent population. He takes advice to seek the assistance of sailor Rita (Kate Winslet) in getting home, but first they must contend with having run afoul of The Toad (Ian McKellen), a mob boss with a chronic hate-on for rats despite some of them (Andy Serkis, Bill Nighy, and Christopher Fairbank) being his underlings.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)

I had enjoyed all the WaG shorts as well as The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Alas, their only outing since (Shaun the Sheep doesn't count) had been World of Invention, a 2010 documentary miniseries that doesn't match the rest in humor, let alone adventure. Well, my parents wasted little time in inviting me to see this new addition to Netflix with them, and I wasted little time in saying yes.

In case you need a refresher on The Wrong Trousers from 1993, goofy inventor Wallace (Ben Whitehead, replacing the late Peter Sallis) and especially his mute but hypercompetent pooch, Gromit, foiled thieving penguin Feathers McGraw, who got sent to a zoo. Now Wallace has created a mechanical gnome, Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), who does well enough at gardening to make local news, gaining Feathers' attention. Thanks to both overreaching and lax policing, Feathers can hack Norbot remotely, making him build a platoon of gnomes who pretend to help the neighborhood but swipe yard implements for machine parts. The scheme is to bust Feathers out, steal the soon-to-be-exhibited Blue Diamond again, and frame Wallace.

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019)

After my rave about the 2015 outing, I pretty much had to see this soon. Even if it meant reviewing three British movies in a row, each made in a successive year ending with 9.

A flying saucer descends pretty close to Mossy Bottom Farm, with one frightened human witness to its landing site and the solo pilot's emergence. As luck would have it, the alien, Lu-La, comes to the farm and is discovered by Shaun, who lets the other sheep in on her(?) but hides her from the farmer and his dog, Bitzer. The farmer does notice rumors of a UFO and decides to cash in by directing his animals to construct a crude theme park. The sheep cover for Shaun as he and Lu-La sneak out, trying to get her home before the Ministry of Alien Detection, led by a grimly determined Agent Red and a beleaguered WALL-E-like robot, stops her.

Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015)

Had it really been ten years since I last watched a feature film from Aardman Animations? I'm afraid so. After the success of Chicken Run and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, they had a string of less promising releases: Flushed Away, Arthur Christmas, and The Pirates! Band of Misfits. Fortunately, I had seen several episodes of the "Shaun the Sheep" TV series and thus knew it to be more in the vein of the Wallace and Gromit franchise. It was easier than I'd hoped to talk both parents into watching.

OK, the movie wasn't entirely a safe bet. Each episode streams less than 20 minutes, including the opening sequence, the end credits, two plots, and a little dance in the middle for filler. Maybe the studio just didn't want to spend any more time and resources on stop-action than necessary. But there was further room for doubt: Episodes consistently kept the setting to a little farm and, with only one human character, had absolutely no dialogue. Even in this 85-minute romp, which moves much of the action to "the Big City," humans say very little; and when they do, it's basically Simlish. Apart from the background music, I've heard more spoken English -- heck, more verifiable words in any language -- from Jacques Tati animations.