What will you do if it will rain with cheeseburger, pizza, chicken wings, or even steak? All the foods that you think will just pour out like a rain down from the sky… Not just that, even creating the whole town into an ice cream land. Whoa! So amazing right? Just enjoy the moment, and eat all you can! I’m about to present a review about this silly yet so funny movie –
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
At first I have no idea of what this movie all about. My younger sister just borrowed the DVD until it captivated my attention due to its intense humor and gluttony moments. I made a research and found out that this is a film created last 2009 under the production of Sony Pictures Animation and distributed by Columbia Pictures. It is the second 3D animated film after Monster House (a great film, too) made using animation rendering software, “Arnold” and the open source image toolkit
OpenImageIO. The story was based on children’s book with the same title by Judi and Ron Barrett. This was showed in Japan and other countries, unfortunately not here in the Philippines.
Here’s the plot:
“Have you ever felt like you were a little bit different? Like you had something unique to offer the world, if you could just get people to see it. Then you know exactly how it felt to be me.” – Flint Lockwood
It all started in the town named Swallow Falls, a place where the residents where fed up only by sardines (fried, boiled, fresh, and juiced). Flint Lockwood (main protagonist) was a mad-scientist. At a very young age, he concluded that the world’s main problem that is facing is the untied shoelace. Then, he solved this with a “Spray On shoes” that had no way of taking off and that became a disaster. He was bullied and called a “nerd” by his colleagues. He still continued to do his will and at the same time get the acceptance by all the people in Swallow Falls. He then created mad-science inventions that all turned out into disaster (e.g. rat birds) until his latest invention, the Flint Lockwood's Diatomic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator (or the FLDSMDFR), a device which turns water into food, believing that their sardine dependency will be solved.
Accidentally, the device received a super high voltage that made it go up in the sky. For scientific results, it rained with the first ever food he entered in the program, cheese burgers. Voila! His invention worked out!
The gray life at Swallow Falls has gradually bloomed and changed its name to ‘Chew and Swallow’ and Flint was asked by the mayor to serve 3 meals pr day. All served foods are made-to-order. Breakfast: sunny-side-up, Lunch: Chicken wings, Dinner: steak, and for kids: nips and gummy bears.
Everyday have different meals, and the land of Sardine will soon become a tourist spot. All foods are all edible until the device absorbed great amount of water and worked out very strange which turned all those edible foods into huge sizes that could destroy the town. And not just that, it created a tornado of Spaghetti which frightened all nations because it can destroy the world in just 20 minutes!
To solve this, he flew to the sky and seen that the device is inside a giant meatball where the water goes to the top and a food hurricane goes at the bottom. As the machine set ups to throw a final blast of giant food, Flint was able to use his Spray-On Shoes formula to block the mouth of the device, causing the FLDSMDFR and the meatball to explode in the sky and the typhoon of foods gone away. And the world was saved.
In the end his father, Tim, was finally able to tell his real feelings for his son using his thought-translator invention and able to kiss her love desire in the story, Sam Sparks, an intern weather forecaster that helped him at the climax of the story. Read the full plot
here.
THE STRONG POINTS:
- A disastrous movie next to the “The Day After Tomorrow” and “2012”.
- The witty story was really awesome! A Mouthwatering story. I really commend the imaginative authors.
- It surely satisfies the eyes of a hungry tummy and captivates the attention of kids.
- Lesson: From Flint, that dreams is to be accepted by everyone and create something that will make him popular. When it finally happened, still, he got no approval from his Father. A family member’s approval is seriously important. But, as the story goes, you don’t have to impress others, just be true to yourself.
- Sort of a wholesome love story for Flint and Sam, cute!
- It showed two types of father: The one who says “I love you” to his child everyday and the other who is lacking of thoughts but is sincerely proud of his child. Who do you have?
- The super-duper humorous lines and actions delivered by the entire cast.
- The animation and effects are wonderful!
- I’m sure it will inspire the kids with the science magic.
THE WEAK POINTS:
- It might scare kids ages 8 and below because of the effects of hurricane and what’s in the inner part of the giant meatball.
- Some lines are super scientific which cannot be easily understood by the audience. (No doubt, Flint is a scientist)
- The movie turned out too long.
- The story from the book is a lot different from the movie (that’s what they said, I haven’t read it yet).
This is a great movie I highly recommend to watch by parents and kids not less than 9 years old because there are some parts of the story that might frightened them so much. Over all I enjoyed it, the story, the animation, the direction.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is an all-out-funny movie that touches my heart and left me closed to teary eyes.
My rating: 9/10
Love and Kisses,
