Movie Review: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Stars: 4 out of 5
Pros: Creative and humorous

Cons: A few pacing issues, aimed mostly at kids

The Bottom Line:

It's a bit silly

So kids will enjoy the most

But it's still decent

It's Raining...Food?

Okay, I confess, it took my roommate to get me to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.  I was going to write if off as too childish and not waste my time or money.  But he really wanted to see it, so off we went.  And it turns out this movie isn't half bad.

All his life, Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) has wanted to be an inventor.  But his inventions have been one disaster after another.  Still, he never gives up, hoping one day to be liked by people in general and loved by his father (James Caan).

Flint lives in the town of Swallow Falls on a little island in the middle of the ocean.  The town is suffering a severe depression since the sardine cannery in town has shut down.  In fact, the residents are now forced to eat the smelly fish.  So Flint decides to make a machine that will turn water into food.

The bad news is the machine gets away from him.  The good news is that it works.  Soon, the residents are enjoying a wide variety of food every day.  But can Flint keep his machine under control?

This movie is based on a picture book, which means that they had to really expand the story.  Even though it is just under an hour and a half, they still seemed to be stretching a couple of times.  But for the most part, the story moves forward at a steady pace.

The laughs are plentiful.  Yes, some of the time we are laughing at the absurd situations.  But they also include some good sight gags.  And the creativity shown in the original book is evident here.  Frankly, there were times I wanted to freeze the frame because I bet I was missing out of more laughs.  And I can't leave out Steve, a monkey with a voice box.  While not as great as Dug in Up, he was still very funny.

The movie adds some good messages about being true to yourself and loving your family.  At times they were a tad preachy, but for the most part they felt like a real part of the movie.  They were certainly predictable.  While I wasn't sure where the main story was going, I had the character arcs figured out pretty much as soon as the characters started interacting.

Computer animation has now been around long enough that we can have various forms of it.  This isn't the ultra realistic stuff of Pixar.  Instead, it's very stylized.  The humans especially are very cartoony while the backgrounds are a tad more realistic.  There is very little here that will blow you away, but it is more than adequate to get the story told.

I was actually quite impressed with the voice cast.  It includes the likes of Anna Faris, Bruce Campbell, Mr. T, Al Roker, Lauren Graham, and Neil Patrick Harris.  And some of them are in pretty small roles.  They all did a good job, which for me means I was focusing on the characters and not picturing the actors saying their lines.

The climax borrows from the Pixar playbook and is a climax-that-will-not-end.  The characters face multiple problems, all of them growing bigger as they go along.  How the cast deals with some of them is pretty clever.  However, some of the character moments come during the climax.  They are shoe horned in and wind up slowing things down.

I saw the movie in 3-D (which might be the only way it is still in the theaters).  This movie was designed for the format.  There were quite a few shots that took full advantage of the medium.  The characters may not blow you away, but the shots will.  Even when the technology is just used to make the picture look fuller, it is worth it.

Kids are definitely the target audience.  While I enjoyed it, I'm not driven to watch it again.  I overheard some of the kids in the theater raving about how funny it was when the movie was over.  I could picture kids watching it over and over again, while for me once is enough.  I'm not a fan of gross humor, and there were a few scenes bordering on that, but I'm sure most kids will enjoy them.

I don't think that Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs will end up on any best of lists, mine included.  But it is a fun movie worth watching, especially if you have kids.