This is the first major Hollywood picture from Nick Park’s much-loved Aardman, creators of Wallace and Gromit, who made their feature-length debut in the sublimely daft film Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Aardman have here teamed up with DreamWorks Animation and the result is something that I couldn’t really make friends with.

Considering how authentically British the Wallace & Gromit creation was, there is something irritatingly touristy and Hollywoodised about the London in which this film is set. Supposedly Brit characters say things like “You’re toast!” and, in honour of the fact that there is supposedly a World Cup final between England and Germany in the offing, a huge neon sign in Piccadilly Circus says “Go England!” Only American sports fans use that phrase, and I am very surprised that the scriptwriters (Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, with additional material by Simon Nye) permit this sort of patronising solecism.

But anyway, things cheer up after a while. Hugh Jackman voices a pampered pet mouse in a posh London house who gets flushed down the lavatory and finds himself in a sewer underworld of rats. He falls in love with a feisty girl rat (Kate Winslet) and together they battle an evil toad (Ian McKellen). After a dull opening half-hour, the gags begin to kick in and there are some laughs, especially when the deplorable toad has to address his minions via the video link on someone’s mobile phone; only his bloated face is visible, so a French mime-artist frog stands behind the phone, supplying the hand-gestures - it’s the sort of inspired silliness that only Aardman can come up with. Not great, but a reasonable Yuletide entertainment.