Lambie Reviews Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Year: 2009
Accolades: Highly regarded animated film.

A young man, Flint, has spent his entire life living on the small island of Swallow Falls. It's situated under the letter 'A' in 'Atlantic' and was once famous for its sardines. Now they can't sell them and they're all stuck eating them. Flint doesn't care much for fishing type stuff and would rather be a scientist and inventor, so after many failed attempts throughout his childhood at inventing things he finally invents a machine that turns water into food. The machine somehow ends up stuck in the atmosphere above the island, meaning that it'll now rain food. Of course, it all goes horribly wrong.

Many family films make the mistake of thinking that they have to pander to the young children and only that part of their audience, leaving the older members of the audience (such as the parents) out of the equation. The end result, intentionally or not, ends up being dull, childish humour that ends up satisfying no one. There's a difference between a family film that doesn't work because it was aimed at young kids and a children's film that works because it was aimed at young kids.

This film does not fall into this trap. It's a fantastic film, and has renewed my faith that family films can be fun to watch and filled with genuinely funny comedy. The plot is simple enough for the young ones, but contains enough complexity and subtleties to entertain everyone else as well. Yes, the message about how science is cool does sometimes jump to the foreground rather than stay a little more subtle, but given that science is one of the themes of the film it's forgivable.

The jokes and gags constantly had me smiling or laughing. There's a good mix of different styles of humour, too, and doesn't totally rely on the stupid slapstick humour that some films go for. Combined with a wonderful animation style, it all adds up to give the film a wonderful energy that the film thrives off.

The characters are all wonderful, and despite the ensemble nature of the cast they are all each easily identifiable. Hell, one of them is voiced by Mr T, and he does a brilliant job. Bill Hader and Anna Faris are well cast in the lead roles, and the animation gives them plenty of life as it does with everything else in the film.

Of course, the film isn't perfect. A couple of the characters are used a bit more than the one-off joke that should have been designated to them, and bits of the third act go in a bit of an odd direction. It does sort of justify it later on, but at the time it just seems like extra jokes that weren't needed or just a device to necessitate conflict. The opening titles and credits, while awesome in their own right, also don't quite seem to fit in with the tone of the rest of the film.

In the end, though, it's a step in the right direction for animated films. There's been some dreadful stuff lately, and it's great to see something like this that everyone can enjoy. It's just a shame that, according to the IMDb, they're making a totally unnecessary sequel.