MAYBE it's just me, but a lot of the fun of Flushed Away is that the pampered pet mouse . . . who thinks he has it made in a posh Kensington home, but gets flushed down the loo into the slimy world of sewer rats beneath the streets . . . looks refreshingly like Tony Blair, particularly when he tries to talk his way out of trouble with a cocky smile.

Not that children will have such bad thoughts. Flushed Away is a happy midAtlantic marriage of the stop-motion model animation of Aardman Features (Wallace & Gromit) and computer animation of DreamWorks (Shrek). London's glittering West End is amusingly replicated in a subterranean parallel world where Hugh Jackman's bewildered mouse is rescued from the clutches of Ian McKellen's repulsive toad by Kate Winslet's feisty cockney rat, while a chorus of slugs serenade the action with comic takes on popular rock songs.

Deck The Halls (John Whitesell): Matthew Broderick, Kristin Davis, Danny DeVito.

Running time: 94 mins . . .

Gone is the Christmas tradition of candle-lit windows and cribs in the hall. Affluent Ireland is rapidly succumbing to the keepup-with-the-Joneses American ostentation of up-front neon-lit house facades and garden displays. It's a seasonal fad affectionately parodied in Deck The Halls.

Matthew Broderick is in charge of a small town's annual yuletide celebrations to the despair of his long-suffering teenage children and wife Kristin Davis. Not to be out-done, his new neighbour Danny DeVito festoons his house with enough lights to be seen from outer space and creates a live manger installation complete with donkeys, cows, sheep and an imported camel. It's a comic duel of farcical extremes with the spectacular lights as a genuine wow factor.

Big Nothing (Jean-Baptise Andrea): David Schwimmer, Alice Eve, Simon Pegg, Natascha McElhone.

Running time: 86 mins. . . .

While working at a computer-help call centre in Big Falls, Oregon, unemployed teacher David Schwimmer and Simon Pegg come up with a scam to blackmail clients they catch logging into porn sites. Using sexy former teenage beauty queen Alice Eve as their front girl, they turn the screw on a dodgy reverend only to find that they're out of their league. Big Nothing aspires to the black humour of Shallow Grave but lacks the comic timing to deliver.

Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell): Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson.

Running time: 102 mins . . . .

Don't miss this uninhibited Cannes hit: an improvised cocktail . . . in the literal sense . . . of gay-kitsch live sex and group orgies in a Cabaret-style New York underground club, it triumphs through its sheer uninhibited joie de vivre.