I took the girls to see Flushed Away yesterday. I love taking my kids to movies. Even the bad ones. It’s around 2 hours that I get to sit and relax and cuddle with them and they don’t talk back to me and they don’t argue with each other.

Anyway, Flushed Away is pretty good for a kid flick. It has some chuckle-out-loud moments, and unlike Shrek didn’t totally play to the adults so the kids got most of it. A few of the sight gags were more subtle…like Kate Winslet’s character losing her boat with a mechanical arm in a shot cut right out of Titanic. I snickered, 8 year-old Emily had no idea why. Interesting to hear Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman speaking with their natural English accented voices, since they are most known here in roles where they play American (shows you how often I get to non-animated movies these days).

The next paragraph contains a spoiler for Flushed Away…

Afterwards, the girls and I had a quick dinner in the food court and Laini (10) pointed out to me that Flushed Away, Open Season and Cars were the same movie. How so, besides being computer animated? She told me: “They all have main characters who start out leading the cushy life. They think they’re happy. Then someone pulls them away to a new life they don’t think they want. They want to go back, but then they help the people in their new place and at the end they realize they’re happier there so they stay.” I was impressed. She’s absolutely right. This is my kid with non-verbal learning disorder who has a lot of trouble with “big picture” and critical thinking. She rarely, if ever, draws conclusions between different stories bigger than “they were both girls with red hair.”