Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (***½)

Directed by: Phil Lord & Chris Miller
Starring (Voices): Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Bruce Campbell, Mr. T, Benjamin Bratt, Neil Patrick Harris
Seen: October 17th 2009

***½ Out of ****

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs might be the funniest animated feature film I’ve ever seen. From the outset everything is done tongue in cheek, and there is something here for everyone, not just the children (who I strongly suspect won’t get almost half the humour). The movie starts with the hero explaining where he lives: in Swallow Falls hidden under the A in Atlantic Ocean on the world map. And in this vein the humour goes on – I think to watch it again will be to discover a host of new material to laugh at that I didn’t notice the first time around.

Flint Lockwood (Hader) has been an inventor since the scientist jacket his mother gave him as a kid dragged along on the ground behind him (the sleeves too). He has invented various interesting and strange things, starting with No Lace Shoes (to combat the #1 epidemic in society today, loose shoe-laces), and ranging through such things as RatBirds (rats with rainbow-coloured wings), to Remote Controlled TV (the TV walks to you), to a Thought Translator for his monkey, Steve (Harris). None of his inventions have, however, really taken off and impressed the Sardine eating Swallow Falls, and this haunts Flint, who only wants his fathers’ (Caan) approval after losing his mother years ago. Flint has the answer with his latest invention, the FLDSMDFR (Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator), which can transform water into food, any food you desire. The problem is that the machine is quite power intensive, and when Flint finally finds enough electricity, the machine overloads and gets shot into space, where it starts sucking in clouds, and it literally starts raining food. Everything doesn’t work perfectly for long, and soon Flint has to deal with some side-effects of this wonderful invention, as you’ll see when watching the movie.

The humour is incredible, from such simply things as Steve “talking” (similar to Dug from Disney-Pixar’s UP) through his thought translator to advice from a few youngsters when a RatBird flies away with a little kid. The story also does not simply stop at trying to be funny, as there are some great life lessons and beautifully moving scenes too: Flint’s interactions with his mother as a little boy and his interaction with his father closer to the end of the movie being prime examples of this. There is even a love story of sorts as Flint meets a girl, Sam Sparks (Faris), a reporter from New York sent to Swallow Falls because she’s the rookie, ending up the lucky one as she pretty much arrives just before the food starts raining. This little romance is also a more enthralling and true story than most romance films present us with nowadays, as it talks straight to being yourself, and not hiding behind facades which might seem to be the answer.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is an enormously entertaining animated feature, and I’m thankful for the existence of the children’s book the movie was based on (even though I know nothing of it). If you’re in the mood for an action-adventure-animated-comedy-romance with soul and a lot of laughs, don’t miss this one!