The story is simple: Sludgers wants something more than a hardscrabble life and his agent pal Feldwick redefines his desires as fame and fortune. Both wind up instead with musical happiness, an outcome that's not exactly Earth-shattering. But at least it's not patently offensive like the majority of smart-aleck, cynical programming for children.

Sludgers is a hugable, maladroit aardvark with a long snout, but his 'ugliness' is partly defined by his ragged clothing. Local meercats call the aardvarks garbage, and the chi-chi denizens of Beak City avoid Sludgers as if he were an undesirable street person. So his social problem falls somewhere between species intolerance and class snobbery.

There's a lot of attractive stop-motion animation here, with the puppets moving amid clever miniature sets. The story doesn't contain many surprises, but there are a couple of clever characters. Beryl the ex-lounge singer (voice: Lindsay Duncan) goes against most clichés and makes us wish her dreams were fulfilled a bit better than becoming a second string backup singer for Hamilton's Rhythm Band. A sleek lounge-lizard parrot serves as Hamilton's foolish front, and is happily not used as some kind of villain. The villains actually prepare to do radical plastic surgery on Hamilton to make him more compatible with Beak City's visual values. But our aardvark avoids the chainsaw (not used violently; no jeopardy here) and decides to keep his own identity.

Sludgers gets his name from a billboard that promises "happiness with a Hamilton Mattress," the kind to sleep on. That's his instant new name, and it's nice that the story shows that 'fame' can be had with such a meaningless marketing gambit. Hamilton Mattress doesn't drive the point home, but I think kids might get the message anyway.

Hamilton kicks in with some heavy-duty showoff drumming that will also appeal to kids. A nice stop motion effect blurs his drumsticks, either that or they're digitally post-blurred. For his big finale, he seques into sort of a Rap song that's neither here nor there, but has a positive beat. This is no Pixar home run, but can be a pleasant diversion for creative little minds.

MGM's DVD of Hamilton Mattress is not bad at all. The enhanced picture looks great, and the surround-sound audio is rich. The extras are three making-of videos from Harvest Films. All have too much talking and not enough behind-the scenes. We're barely given a peek at the models and puppets but the producers and voice talent (three men only) jaw on about details that aren't going to interest adult animation fans, let alone kids. It's alluded that Hamilton or his creator John Webster started in children's books, but if that's so we see no samples. Everyone talks about Hamilton becoming a franchise, if only the right story pops up. Well, that's the trick, isn't it? This one could have used a better story too, but the characters certainly have potential.

The DVD case is bright and attractive, and wisely doesn't mislead with claims that this is a continuation of the Wallace & Gromit series.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Hamilton Mattress rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Three featurettes: a straight Making of, The Birth of an Aardvark concept piece, and Behind the Voices in a recording studio.
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: February 19, 2004