Early Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs Review
Director: Phil Lord, Chris Miller
Starring: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell, Mr. T
Released: 18 September 2009 (US & UK)

You ever had that dream where on an early Summer morning you step outside of your house, you look in the sky and there is this giant 20ft hotdog plummeting at high velocity towards you and then you get crushed by said hotdog? No? Oh just me then.

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is the latest 3D family movie from Sony Pictures Animation that takes this concept of giant food falling out of the sky and convolutes an entire 90 minute plot out of it. In fact, the origins of this movie comes from the Judi Barret children’s book of the same name back in 1978 but on with the story…

The movie opens with young kindergartner whizzkid inventer Flint Lockwood presenting his new device to his classmates during a show-and-tell – spray-on rubber shoes. The class are initally awestruck until the class bully points out a major fault – the shoes are permanently stuck! Throughout the years, adult Flint (an excellent Bill Hader) develops more and more contraptions each with their imperfections causing evermore disapprovement from his technophobe father (as voiced by James Caan) until one day he invents a machine that causes food to fall from the sky.

Before I carry on with this review, let me just start by reeling off some of the voice cast on this movie: Apatow alumni Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Andy Samberg, Neil Patrick Harris, Bruce Campbell, James Caan and Mr. Freaking T! In a normal live-action movie that cast would be awesome – so it goes to show there was a lot of strength in the casting itself. Faris plays the love-interest, Samberg plays the jerk, Bruce Campbell is the greedy mayor and rest of the supporting cast is very, very good. But one of the standouts for me was Mr. T – amazingly, his voice translates excellently to animated features as he really captures his neighbourhood cop character well. I can’t believe that he hasn’t been on the big screen since 2001’s Not Another Teen Movie as he definitley has a chance to re-invent himself as a character voice actor - his voice betraying the years that have been put on his physical appearance. Why else would Quentin “Rampage” Jackson be the new BA Baracus right (apart from the fact he’s going to be AWESOME in that role too)?

For some reason, this movie reminds me a lot of….

… this advert. The police can tell by just looking at you these days

Back to the movie, I would consider Meatballs one of the finest family movies I’ve seen in a while, it entertains the kids but crucially keeps the adults charmed too. Did I mention that I watched this entire movie in 3D?? I mean, these monster pizzas were in my FACE at some points!

The novelty of having gigantic proportions of food, ranging from ice cream snow hills to spaghetti tornadoes is a very fun experience (despite I was fasting at the time) and having the dynamics of the character relationships ticking over at the same time keeps things fresh and amusing. Pixar-type 3D Animation definitley lends itself to many imaginative and fantastic opportunities for story-telling which no doubt Up! will do, so it’s good to see something interesting is being done with this format of movie rather than the typical creature features that is getting old as we speak (step up G-Force). That being said, if it wasn’t for the cast and adept script, it wouldn’t be nearly enjoyable to view the set-pieces on offer.

Our Rating: B

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