Dazzling! (With a Chance of Predictability)

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

***1/2 out of ****

Directed by: Phil Lord and Chris Miller (and a lot of people!)

Featuring the voice talents of: Bill Hader, James Caan, Anna Faris, Mr. T, Bruce Campbell, Andy Samberg and Neil Patrick Harris

Running Time: 90 minutes

Don’t know what to do as you anxiously await the big-screen treatment of Maurice Sendak’s beloved classic Where the Wild Things Are?

Well, we’ve got another adaptation straight from your little one’s bedside table just for you; thankfully, it’s a scrumptious appetizer, a 92-minute delight brought to you in three gorgeous dimensions.

Based on the book of the same name by Judi and Ron Barrett, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a bountiful buffet of furious family fun. It is as dazzlingly animated as it is dizzyingly funny, but it also packs in some meaty moral observations (although your kids probably won’t get them). It also has Neil Patrick Harris as a talking monkey.

“Have you ever felt you were a little bit different?” asks inventor Flint Lockwood (voiced by SNL’s Bill Hader). Teased for the failures of his wacky inventions, he takes a job in a bait shop in the town of Swallow Falls, owned by his disapproving father (James Caan).

Now, Swallow Falls is a gray, dreary place, situated on a small island miles off the coast of the Northeastern United States. While it thrives on its sardine industry (think Sea World with much less pizzazz), the town reaches rock bottom when its main sardine corporation goes bust.

Flint, to help energize the town, begins work on a machine that transfers water into food. But a power surge used to test the machine leaves Swallow Falls in manic disarray and unleashes the gadget into the sky like a hyperactive balloon.

Alongside a new pal, wannabe weather girl Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), Flint gasps with exhilaration as cheeseburgers descend onto the town.

With these tasty treats falling from the sky, the mayor (Bruce Campbell) plots to use these succulent storms to his advantage. He dreams up a plan to turn the struggling Swallow Falls, now renamed Chew and Swallow, into a tourist attraction of dramatic – wait for it – portions.

But while the forecast starts off as friendly, as the requests pile into Flint’s laboratory, the machine begins to act a little bit curiously. What follows is unlike any disaster flick you’ve ever seen.

Meatballs is the first film from Sony Pictures to use their animation rendering software. And they don’t even bother to take it easy. The images on screen are big, bold and breathtaking. The colours are sharp, vibrant and plentiful. In other words, get ready for your eyes to pop (thankfully, those 3D glasses will keep them from popping out too far).

And say what you will about the 3D technology that’s recently invaded our multiplexes. While it can be a distraction that darkens the screen and lightens your wallets, Meatballs has a bright, crisp transfer. It is not done sorely for amusement but as a way to bring the audience closer into the beautiful pallette on screen. This is how you use the technology, fellas.

With the exception of the monstrous shifts in weather, however, the film is largely formulaic. The disapproving father, the misunderstood outcast and the power-hungry (well, in this case, REALLY hungry) mayor are cut-and-paste from past animated efforts. While these personalities are not entirely unique, there are plenty of situations in this film that are unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

I mean, you have a kid wake up for his birthday to find out that it has snowed ice cream (all of the children are doing snow angels – faces down ). You also have a tornado of spaghetti wrecking the town, in one of the film’s later sequences, eerily reminiscent of a scene in the cheesy disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow, but done with more – wait for it – taste.

Meatballs also contains a platter of eccentric voice talent. At one end, you have modern SNL folk Bill Hader, Andy Samberg and Will Forte, while at another, 80s television stars Neil Patrick Harris and Mr. T. Then there’s cult favourite Bruce Campbell. And Al Roker is voicing a weatherman (as if that’s a stretch).

The movie is packed with visual gags and frantic fun. But it also says something about the effects of consumption, obesity, and even solid waste that many youngsters won’t catch.

These moral observations don’t come quietly; for example, the leftover food is stored in a giant mountain which later collapses and destroys much of the town. Also, one of the film’s young characters goes into a coma from eating too much sugar (and while this scene is bitterly abrupt and overdramatic, it may teach your kids a lesson).

Do you remember the moment in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where Gene Wilder opens up the doors of the chocolate room and all that anyone can do is marvel at the imagination of the edible excitements before their eyes? That is essentially what Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is like: just animated, in 3D and 89 minutes longer.

Do me a favor: grab the family, grab the extra dollars for the extra dimension, and savour every minute of this grand bowl of fun.