Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
Columbia Pictures
Directed by Phil Lord, Chris Miller
Starring Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Neil Patrick Harris, James Caan

It is rare to find a children's movie that entertains the child as much as the parents that are watching it with them. Usually the parent just sits through it for the sake of the child. Since the early 2000’s, children’s movies have begun to become more entertaining for the tortured adult. One of the more familiar films to do this includes Shrek, Shrek 2, and Kung Fu Panda. Sony Pictures Imageworks is not as popular as Pixar or as well known as DreamWorks Animation, but they have started to create some winning films. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is the third film from Sony and boasts fun for children and adults alike.

Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) is an aspiring young scientist who wants to help his island of Swallow Falls, located in the Atlantic Ocean. His inventions never seem to go as planned, which makes Flint a nuisance to the town and to his father, Tim (James Caan). He creates a machine that forms food from water, but is gets stuck in the atmosphere. The machine works and Flint is a hero for saving the town and supplying the citizens with food. When the people begin requesting food, the machine starts to mutate the food into extremely large portions that create spaghetti twisters and meatball hail storms. It’s up to Flint to stop his machine, rescue the town, get the girl of his dreams (Anna Faris), and get respect from his father.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs may not look like much from the synopsis, but it has a lot going for it. It is not just another kid’s movie like Astro Boy, but instead it is clever and just plain fun. The story is crazy, the characters are funny and likable, and the humor is in surplus. Many of the jokes are from Flint’s talking monkey, Steve, who has an obsession with mustaches and gummy bears. In fact, Steve manages to save the group from mutated killer gummy bears by ripping the heart out of one and eating it.

The story is a little over the top with precipitation of steaks, ice cream, and hamburgers, and a battle inside the food covered machine in the air, but it is just plain fun that tries to show a message of overconsumption of product, and the greed that follows it. The voice actors are well suited for this film, as they are not too recognizable which tends to distract audiences from other animated features such as Shrek and Shark Tale. The animation is not original, but it suits this kind of film. It is not the best animated feature, but it definitely stands up there with Surf’s Up and Kung Fu Panda.

Rating: B+


February 25, 2010