Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (**½)
Directed
by: Cody Cameron & Kris Pearn
Starring
(Voices): Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Will Forte, Andy Samberg, Neil
Patrick Harris, Benjamin Bratt, Terry Crews, Kristen Schaal, Khamani Griffin
Seen:
February 7th 2014
**½
Out of ****
The
first Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was a welcome surprise, an inventive
animated movie with heart by the bucket-load and a very innovative sense of
humour that spoke to everyone. It was sweet and extremely enjoyable – one of my
favourite animated movies. The second one tries to replicate that, and while
the movie is still pretty funny and good fun, it doesn’t reach anything near
what its predecessor was. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is funny and sweet,
and caters for both children and adults, it’s just not as great as the first
movie was.
After
the FLDSMDFR (Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator) was
destroyed at the end of the first movie, the Bill Nye equivalent of this world,
Chester V (Forte) and his company Live Corp, are tasked with cleaning up the
island. Chester V approaches Flint (Hader) for help, and Flint agrees,
oblivious to everything since Chester V is his hero, to help recover the FLDSMDFR,
which we learn was not, in fact, destroyed (good sequel material there). Flint
takes his friends along, reuniting the bulk of the cast from the first movie,
with Sam Sparks (Farris), Flint’s girlfriend; Flint’s dad Tim (Caan) and his
eyebrows; the still somewhat moronic but wholly well-intentioned Chicken Brent
(Samberg); single-word vocabulary genius Steve the Monkey (Harris); the
all-purpose Manny (Bratt); and tough as nails Officer Earl Devereaux (Crews) all
along for the adventure. They happen upon a Jurassic Park of sorts, with all
types of foodimals having evolved on the island: Burger-spiders, Fla-Mangoes,
Shrimpanzees, Butter-Frogs, Mosqui-Toasts, and many more. Now it’s up to Flint
to find the FLDSMDFR, and it’s up to the team to get through Flint’s thick
skull, so that he can realise the real reason Chester V wants the FLDSMDFR, and
so that they all can avert further disaster.
The
movie is a beautifully animated, massively colourful backdrop for an OK story
and many hilarious food-puns. But after the ending of the movie, I couldn’t
help but think that this movie was made for two reasons, with one of these being
financial gain. The other to me is the bigger bother – it felt as if, after the
first movie, everyone involved was sitting around thinking something along the
lines of: “but there’s all these jokes left that we never used in the first
movie, we have to build a sequel around them to get them out to the world…”.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 might not be as good as the first movie,
but it’s still hilarious and quite enjoyable, if only in a more rather-wait-for-the-DVD
way.
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