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Movie review: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
BY MAGGIE SCOTT
First, there was “Up”. Now, there is “Down,” so-to-speak, with the scrumptious new 3-D animated comedy release from Columbia Pictures, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs;” in which the sky is falling on the Atlantic island community of Swallow Falls and the effect won’t be like pennies from heaven for long.
Until the rest of the world decided they were “gross” and stopped buying, the humble sardine had provided the inhabitants of Swallow Falls a decent way of life and of making a living—like the bait and tackle shop of Tim Lockwood (voice of James Caan).
Since the sardines won’t be going to the people, the mayor (voice of Bruce Campbell) decides he’ll bring the people to the sardine with the building of an amusement park called Sardine Land.
Opening day doesn’t go quite as planned when an invention of Tim’s son, Flint (voice of Bill Hader), known as the Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator, is launched into low earth orbit after whizzing through the park, smashing and exploding such attractions as the giant fishbowl with a fiery hoop for the world’s largest sardine to jump through.
The Replicator is just the latest in what the young Flint has believed were his failed inventions, like a flying car and a thought translator. Cherishing the white lab coat his dearly departed mother gave him, Flint has carried on with his drive to create, despite rejection from his peers and expectations by his dad to get “a real job.” But, now, it looks like instead of the “big things” his mother believed he’d do some day, it’s just another case of a Flint fiasco.
Then…a cheeseburger suddenly lands at his feet and at the feet of the cute Junior News Analyst from the Weather News Network. Sam Sparks (voice of Anna Faris) is the first person since his mother to get Flint. But, unlike him, she’s been hiding her inner nerd.
While the Replicator pelts the town with a gastronomical feast of food, making it the object of ravenous curiosity by boatloads of people and the object of fame and fortune fulminations by the mayor, Flint begins to sense that his invention is too much of a good thing. He may be mutating into something with a mind of its own, unwilling to be shut down. With a mountain of garbage, junk food comas, and obesity threatening his home, Flint eventually realizes it might be time to “hit the kill button.”
This story of pie-in-the-sky dreams that actually turn into actual pie in the sky is adapted from the 1978 best-selling children’s book by Judi and Ron Barrett. While the 3-D technology takes care of holding the attention of wee-ones, the three-dimensional voice-acting guarantees a truly balanced cinematic meal for adults.
