Upstream - Episode 31.5: Flushed Away

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Alright look, I did an Abi on this one. I swear to god i remembered this one being okay. Instead, enjoy a slow descent into rat madness at the hands of Aardman's first (I havent checked if this is true) foray into a full CGI movie. It's about the great replacement. I won't elaborate on this Find the whole episode at our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/posts/65969686   *WEB DESIGN ALERT*  Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Find us at https://killjamesbond.com and https://twitter.com/killjamesbond

Blonka, you think I don't know toilet when I see one? Hello and welcome to another episode of Kill James Bond, the podcast most unjustly and regularly asked if it would like to register an Amazon kids account. This time it asked me, do you want to register an Amazon dipshit account? It's like, I see that you're a moron. Welcome to the moron podcast for dipshit movies. I am Alice Caldwell Kelly, joining me are abigail thorn and devon and we have been forced dev you made a post on on the kill james bond account and this can't be proven

you did i was i was present when you did it this was you you listen um go right ahead go right ahead i'm just gonna say there was there was a thing that was posted from the kill janice bond account by one of the three of us and it wasn't me and it wasn't abigail um about how matty yeah about how the girl rats from the ardman dreamworks movie flushed away was a 10 out of 10 stacked up smoke show. I don't know that I used those words. You said all of those things. First of all, I was talking to you.

This was during a D&D game. And we're just arguing on the podcast now. But I said that I enjoyed the character design and that it went hard, quote. Why? And it doesn't. But it did in isolation when I wasn't watching the movie. Now?

Post-watching the movie, I've got to be honest with you, I hate this fucking rat. I don't like this rat at all. Yeah, sadly, this was Devin's pick, I think. Yes, it was. This is another rare L for the non-binary community because this this film features

and is a wave of frozen sewage it's not rare you have to scroll all the fucking way up here to diamonds are forever for L Mr. Bob thank you the basic choice system

that I use when it comes to me is either, as discussed, I go to the list of Golden Harvest movies and sort by least watched. Yep. Or I look at the sort of messages that we've got and see what kind of movies people have flagged up. Or you remember a 10 out of 10 stacked Julia Fox of rats. Or I'm just like, yo, I want to fuck this rat, so I should watch a movie with this rat. Yeah, yeah. So we...

This film, like, the title cards are Dreamworks and Aardman Animation. Yes. I'm like, okay, brilliant. Incredible. Yeah, right? We should talk about Aardman a little bit. I've never been so disappointed since I last looked at my birth certificate. It really is. Fucking certificate. It really is.

Fucking A. It really is abominable. Aardman is this like British sort of shed stop motion animation workshop. They made Wallace and Gromit. They made Chicken Run, my favorite anime. Shaun the Sheep. Yeah. Fuck off.

We're not doing this again. All of these. And you're a little bit starmer there fuck off fuck off um but they are welcome hardman animation which i call on them to go further by making a good film but they they collaborated with dreamworks uh on three movies of which this was the third and final um wait what were the other two chicken run and wallace and gromit curse of the were-rabbit now you might remember both of those as being good or at least chicken run was good and were-rabbit was okay the reason why is because they they made them in stop motion like yeah i i remembered this

one as being claymation but i have never been so wrong in my fucking life would you like would you like to know the reason why this isn't claymation it's because it's got fucking water in it and you can't do stop motion with water it's more expensive to swap out water and stop motion together in the same shot so what they did was they just did all of this in the finest cgi of 2006 it looks real bad. The backgrounds are really sterile, the lighting is bad, the characters move and miss frames. It's like PS2 level. It looks like that

meme film Food Fight. If you know that one, listeners. It looks as worse graphics than the Simpsons 3D episode. We begin in London and within the first 36 seconds of the movie

I am cancelling it because it is the advent of the World Cup final where England are playing and in Piccadilly Circus across the big advertising hoardings a shot of the football pitch comes up. It says, Go England

with a Union Jack. That's not England. That's not the English flag. You are cancelled. I'm afraid I'm going to have to cancel. You've fallen into my trap card, Alice. I'm going to have to Yu-Gi-Oh! bounce the cancellation back at you because that is not the Union Jack because it is not at sea.

As you know, I think. As well you know. I almost said Union Flag. And I knew that if I said Union Flag, the listeners were going to pull me up on this. I'd call you a dipshit for it. I was between Scylla and Charybdis, right? And I've been owned here by Scylla. Technically, I'm not a pedant.

I'm Charybdis. Fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's cool. I get to have like snakes and shit Does that make me like Hercules Jason, I can never remember which one of the dipshits is like in between Scylla and Charybdis

He's an Argonaut, right? Jason's the boss of the Argonauts No, the Argonauts are his boys He's not an Argonaut himself A better story about a voice than this film That's true He captains the Argonauts are his boys. He's not an Argonaut himself. A better story about a voyage than this film is. That's true. He captains the Argo, right? And his boys are the Argonauts.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, absolute fuck. What's your middle name? What's your middle name? You're a spy having my arresting shot. Yeah. So we begin in London.

London is empty because they can't animate people. You'll notice this later on. We really don't. There's nothing here. London looks like 28 days later because there's no one fucking in it. Listener, this movie is a tight

75 minutes. It's 85 minutes including the credits. This is nothing. And so we find ourselves in Kensington, in a nice townhouse where a rich family are going away on holiday the dad is voiced by john cleese and a little cameo and we see yeah and we see that the girl has uh a pet rat uh speaking of little cameos they fuck it they're so proud of themselves aren't they they're throwing in like nothing but references To themselves

Oh yeah like there's a little grommet in there Every like five minutes there will be Some form of grommets Will pass the screen to be like Hey remember we made They're all using the grommet mug Yeah This film's got more grommets than a hard of hearing child

In 2007 Nice fucking hell That's a very deep medical reference No it was good More grommets than a hard of hearing child in 2007. Nice. Fucking hell. That's a very deep medical reference. No, it was good. It was good. We see this rat, Roddy. Roddy St. James.

And he has the place to himself for a while. And we get a little montage which shows that he has every possible creature comfort. He rides around in a little remote control car. He has a bunch of dolls that he plays with that i guess are his girlfriend yeah like because the little girl has dolls and action figures and stuff so roddy like talks to them yeah like it's fucking he's also he's also doing this entirely to a song about masturbation which is billy idols dancing with myself um yes it's interesting choice of soundtrack not the first not the last time in this movie that they will have a an odd choice of soundtrack fascinating movie yeah and and then he he wishes them all good night and we see that secretly his

secret sorrow is as much as he has every possible amenity, he's lonely. I also want to say that up top that Roddy is voiced by Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman like fucking brings 110% to this script. This is the thing, right? The cast list for this is 100% actor who

needs money, but you can see how variable their attitudes are to a movie which they're doing because they need money right and hugh jackman is 100 on board he inhabits the character of this rat he is yeah he he really does some like good voice he trained for eight months to inhabit my god like he is he is carrying this film he's not succeeding because it's too heavy, even for him. It reminds me a little bit of him doing Les Miserables, actually. He's kind of doing Jean Valjean as a rat.

Oi, stop right there. If you want to hear more about rats, you'd better head on down to the Kill James Bond Patreon at patreon.com slash killjamesbond and sign up now for less than the price of a fancy coffee and a little bit over the price of a normal coffee per month.