Film Review: Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs

I’m one of those people who often end up eating their own words, but am usually happy to be proved wrong. When I first saw the trailer for Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, I was indifferent. First of all, the title was ridiculously long (which is why I shall henceforth refer to it as ‘”Cloudy”), and secondly the art style was very unusual, compared to the detailed, expression-ridden faces I see in Pixar films. First mistake: taking something at face-value.

I remember feeling similarly uninterested in another of Sony Pictures Imageworks films – Surf’s up – and yet found that I enjoyed myself, and laughed, quite a lot throughout that film. Second mistake: taking something at trailer-value.

Trailers, in my opinion, are often completely rubbish. Blood the Last Vampire (the live-action version) made the film look worth its salt, and we all know how bad that was.

The point is, I really enjoyed Cloudy. So this is an extensive review of a good animated film, complete with spoilers.

Flint Lockwood is a misfit inventor with severe social difficulties. The local kids think he’s weird, the local policeman thinks he’s a troublemaker, and his dad thinks he’s wasting his time, and should come and work at the family store for a living. They all live on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean called Swallow Falls, where their main source of food is sardines, of which the town was once famous for.

Flint has grown up watching the town decay in poverty, and his unusual inventions go to waste, until one day he invents a machine that can turn water into any kind of food one can dream up. He just needs the power of the town generator.

Enter Sam Sparks, the “cute and super-perky” news reporter and Flint’s love interest, on the day the Mayor decides to turn Swallow Falls into Sardine Land, and also the day Flint decides to hack into the main power-source on the island. Chaos ensues, as it should, and his food machine explodes, destroys Sardine Land and escapes into the atmosphere.

So Flint ends up in big trouble. Until, by some miracle, cheeseburgers start falling from pink clouds. The only explanation: Flint’s machine has somehow lodged itself into the nearest raincloud and continued to work.

Now food is raining down onto the town of Swallow Falls - renamed Chew and Swallow- on a daily basis and the people are happy, despite the huge amount of edible waste soiling the streets (but that can all be solved by another of Flint’s inventions). Lockwood becomes a hero and the town becomes a major tourist attraction, solving poverty and making everyone happy again.
Or so it seems... well it wouldn’t be a good movie without some kind of problem, would it? Flint’s dad still has issues with his invention, the Mayor is getting fatter and greedier, and the falling food is growing to insane proportions. And I’ll leave the summary at that.

Now there’s no mistaking the unusual art style of this film. The super-cartoony characters and their insanely large eyes would look much more at home in 2D than trying to balance their proportions in 3D. And yet as the film goes on, you become more comfortable with the style, and you realise how smooth and detailed the animation actually is. It’s hard to tell in the first half-hour or so, where everything is horrendously fast-paced, to the point sometimes where you cannot understand what a character is saying. But it’s the later slow moments where you really get to see what a good effort this is. The most memorable scene, I think, is where Flint and Sam are bonding in a giant jelly (or jell-o if you’re American) castle. The scene is funny, but also moving, because of the art direction and character development we witness. I won’t go into too much detail, but this is a great movie for bigging-up nerds and girls with glasses.

Another way that this movie is different, and almost refreshing in a way, is the fact that it is actually aimed at children, and thus there is no logic involved in the film whatsoever. Whilst Pixar always aim to add a touch of realism and beauty to their films, and DreamWorks tend to throw at least fifty dirty jokes at the adults, Cloudy is pretty much just for kids, in that it’s daft, illogical and very speedy in its story-telling.

Don’t get me wrong, there are the underlying messages that may affect adults. Believe in yourself, Be true to who you are, Your dad really does love you, and so on. But I felt as though if I hadn’t watched and enjoyed this film, Sony wouldn’t have cared, because it is for the children.
Saying that, the references to Yellow Submarine in the end credits, and the awesome addition of Mr. T to the voice-cast, are not to be missed by any self-respecting adult. And it is a funny film, whether you laugh at the antics of Flint’s talking Monkey, Steve, or his geeky ringtone or the various references to different countries dealing with the food crisis. Incidentally, in London, it rains tea and everyone wears bowler hats. I thought that was pretty accurate.

So there you have it, I recommend you give the film a chance, and don’t go by what you’ve seen in the trailer, because you may miss out. If you’re craving the days where films for children were innocent, smut-free and just impossible but fun, then you should enjoy this little nugget (HA! I made a food joke, about a film, about food...)