Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

I guess this movie wasn't for me. That's not to say Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a bad movie. It's imaginative, it's bright and colorful, and it has a wonderful voice cast. The movie just never really clicked with me. I remembered watching Ponyo last weekend, and how the characters felt honest to the point that I could relate to some of them. I never got that feeling watching this.

I think the main thing that turned me off is that this is essentially a one-joke movie, and that joke is falling food. The story centers on an eccentric and kind-hearted young scientist named Flint Lockwood (voice by Bill Hader), who decides to build a machine that can turn water into food. The device is launched into the sky, and starts turning the water vapor in the air into junk food that it sends raining down on the people below. The movie changes the food that falls (pizzas, pancakes, spaghetti, ice cream), but the gag is essentially the same - Food falls from the sky, and people run away. It's kind of funny and whimsical the first couple times it happens, but it starts to wear out its welcome as the movie goes on. Eventually, the machine goes out of control, and starts dropping massive pieces of food. So, the gag's essentially the same, only now the food is bigger. In this case, bigger is most certainly not better.

The movie obviously means well, just like its lead character, Flint. He invented the machine in order to stop a food crisis that had hit his small town. It used to be a salmon fishing village, and when business dries up (people outside the village stop buying salmons because they're gross), everyone in town is forced to eat nothing but salmon, since they can't sell it anymore. Flint really just wants to be loved by the local people, especially by his dad (James Caan), who has always been emotionally distant. When the machine initially makes Flint a celebrity, he starts to let it go to his head, since he unwisely listens to the town's crooked Mayor (Bruce Campbell). There are a lot of bizarre side characters, chief amongst them is Sam Sparks (Anna Farris), a meteorologist who is sent to cover the story of the "food storm" Flint creates, and eventually develops feelings for him as they work together to stop the device. Other characters include an over-zealous cop (Mr. T), a guy who used to be a baby model mascot, and still wears a diaper in order to hold onto his past glory (Andy Samberg) and a monkey named Steve, who is Flint's best friend, and talks with the aid of a device that "speaks" what the monkey is thinking (Neil Patrick Harris).

I liked a lot of the characters, especially Sam Sparks, who stands out thanks to Farris' spirited voice acting. But the movie never wants to slow down and let us enjoy them. It plows full-speed-ahead to a chaotic climax where the food machine goes out of control, and begins to threaten the entire world. We get a lot of disaster movie parodies thrown at us one after another, we get a lot of gags of different types of food falling on people, and then we get more food falling on people. The writers try to shake things up by actually giving some of the food a personality. The movie throws pizza slices that act like fighter jets, and fried chicken that has somehow developed an appetite for people. It started to get to be too much, especially since the last 40 minutes or so of the movie are devoted entirely to attacking food. In a way, I can understand. The film's designed to be seen in 3D, and is obviously a demo to show off what the studio can do. It never feels like anything more than a gimmick, though.

So, what are we left with? Not much, unless you're in the 10 and under crowd. There were some aspects of the film I thought were clever. I liked the fact that Flint's hi-tech lab was actually his childhood treehouse, which he somehow converted into something out of a James Bond film. The relationship that Flint builds with Sam and with his father also have some moments of truth to them. Still, I wasn't that involved. I was distracted by the somewhat bland character designs, and the sometimes juvenile humor. (If there's a monkey in the movie, you just know he's going to start throwing his own feces at one point.) The one sequence in the film that truly seems magical is a sequence where Flint and Sam frolic inside a giant Jell-o mold. It's a cute little scene, but just like everything else that works here, it doesn't last long enough.

I'm sure Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs will be a big hit with kids. The family film well is looking pretty dry until Where the Wild Things Are hits next month. I wanted to like this movie more than I did. The characters are there, and the heart shows up in certain scenes, but it's all overpowered by repetitive scenes that repeat the same idea. When it was all over, I felt exhausted, and maybe a little hungry. But not delighted.

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