Pun Salad

Animated movies aimed at kids are pretty risky, but this turned out to be a win. The creativity is from Aardman Animations, but unlike their venerable Wallace and Gromit, this is a purely animated feature. It has the Aardman "look", though.

The tale is of Roddy, a pampered pet mouse kept in posh surroundings in Kensington. A home invader dispatches him, via the loo, to the sewer system underneath London. A classic fish out of water story, his efforts to get back home land him in even more complications.

Since the overall plot is pretty much the same as Cars, or any of a few hundred other movies, the movie has some work to do to rise above mediocrity. And it does. The visuals are clever, the dialog is funny (delivered by some excellent voice talent); even the music seemed above average to me. Lots of gags flash by; I missed a lot of them, but that's why we have the IMDB trivia page. It's not quite up to Pixarhood, but gets close enough so I didn't feel my time was wasted.

So it's an excellent movie to watch with the kiddos, and not bad even if you don't have any kiddos around.