FLUSHED AWAY (PG) The latest project from those ever-reliable genius types at Aardman Studios (Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run) is the animated tale of two mice — posh urban rodent Rodney (voiced by Hugh Jackman) and his scruffy female counterpart Rita (Kate Winslet) — sharing an amazing adventure in London. More accurately, the movie situates itself in a miniaturized clone of London located in the sewers below the real city, and populated by a wonderfully eccentric menagerie of mice, frogs and slugs of indeterminate origin (the later being the movie's biggest scene stealers who break out in song at the most bizarre moments). The Anglo-centric humor may occasionally drift over the heads of younger viewers (there's wordplay here on distinctly British patter such as "diverting" and "smashing," and at one point a cockroach can be seen reading Kafka), but the movie is basically good, silly fun for everyone. The characters all have personality to spare, elements of slapstick, adventure and romance are expertly fused and paced, and the classy CGI animation skillfully emulates the charming stop-motion style for which Aardman is so well known. Also featuring the voices of Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Bill Nighy and Andy Serkis. 3.5 stars
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION (PG-13) A worm's-eye view of Hollywood, For Your Consideration should have been Christopher Guest's ready-made masterpiece. Guest and his collaborators are some very funny people, and they know this terrain as well as anybody does, but For Your Consideration rarely offers much beyond some pretty mild amusements, and the level of satirical insight on display here is a notch or two below even the filmmaker's recent A Mighty Wind. The new film revolves around a little independent film (an unintentionally kitschy item called Home for Purim) that's inexplicably managed to generate some Oscar buzz, but, to no one's surprise, Guest and cowriter Eugene Levy use the storyline as a jumping-off point for a series of sketches skewering actors, agents, publicists, critics and various other sundry members of the movie industry. Curiously, though, much of the humor comes off as flat, toothless this time around, and even weirdly dated (jokes about out-of-touch agents exploring the "world Interweb," anyone?), to the point where even a standout performance by Guest regular Catherine O'Hara can't quite turn it all around. Also stars Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge. 2.5 stars
A GOOD YEAR (PG-13) It's nice to see the Gladiator dream team of Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott trying something different — and the breezy romantic comedy of A Good Year is certainly a change from the elaborately produced seriousness we expect from this pair. But while we welcome Crowe and Scott letting their hair down to toss off some silly, throwaway moments, A Good Year often appears to be nothing but throwaway moments. Based on Peter Mayle's book, this uninspired retread of A Year in Tuscany stars Crowe as icy stock trader Max Skinner, a self-described "famously callous" type who flees dreary London for the vineyard he's just inherited in Southern France. Provence turns out to be charming beyond words, of course, the residents are lovably eccentric, and romance quickly rears its head in the form of a comely local restaurateur, as Scott charts Max's predictable transformation from soulless bastard to sensitive bon vivant. The problem here isn't so much that the movie is all complete fluff; it's that Crowe and Scott just don't seem comfortable working in this vein. The goal may well have been to channel the great French humorist Jacques Tati (there's even a cute little dog here by that name), but the comedy on display generally amounts to a fairly vapid mix of sexual innuendo and awkward slapstick. Crowe wears large glasses, falls in swimming pools, and drives around in a funny little yellow car (to the strains of French pop songs and vintage Nilsson), and we can literally see him and Scott straining to drum up the requisite amount of fun. Also stars Albert Finney, Marion Cotillard, Abbie Cornish, Didier Bourdon, Tom Hollander and Freddie Highmore. 2.5 stars