Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Review

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Review

Last Wednesday I took myself off to the cinema to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the latest 3D animation to hit the cinemas.  Although I am probably not in the target audience for the film, I will admit that in the past I have rather enjoyed these films for kids; often they make a conscious effort to also appeal to adults, since they are the ones who will end up sitting through the film with their children, and it is they who will decide whether to see the next children’s film that is released.  I recently enjoyed Monsters vs. Aliens and Bolt, whose name I have temporarily forgotten.  So it was with high hopes that I picked up my 3D glasses, my pick and mix and entered the cinema.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is set in an island community which has been at the centre of the sardine business.  Unfortunately, people stopped eating sardines when they realised they were disgusting (I quite like sardines!), and so not only did the economy of the once thriving town dry up, but the residents were forced to eat the fish that would previously have been exported.  That is until Flint Lockwood, a young inventor makes a machine that miraculously turns water into food.  Unfortunately, during the unveiling of a new sardine-themed adventure park, he accidentally shoots the machine up into the atmosphere, where it lodges and turns clouds into food, which then rain onto the ground below.

Meanwhile, Sam Sparks, a young TV weather girl has been sent to report on the opening of the new theme park.  Her broadcast goes horribly wrong – but she then recovers by bringing the world news of the new food rain.

Flint and Sam decide they quite like each other, and have more in common than first meets the eye.  Sam, who has tried hard to portray herself as a blonde bimbo is actually a geek who wears glasses and her hair in a pony tail.  A quasi-relationship develops between the two of them, and they eventually manage to save the world when they stop the food malfunctioning with the help of a French cameraman/fighter pilot.

As if this wasn’t enough to keep cinema goers on the edge of their seats (or something), an additional storyline develops Flint and Tim, his father, who is the proprietor of a sardine-fishing tackle shop.  Tim wants Flint to give up his inventing and to help him run his shop.  Flint’s mother had died several years ago (of course) and a chasm opened between father and son.  Tim is clearly fed up with Flint’s inventive and dreamy approach to life.

Eventually, of course, father and son are reunited when it becomes clear that Flint’s inventions can make a difference to people.  Tim, a bit of a technophobe, also masters the art of email.

There were just so many things wrong with this film I don’t know where to start.  First of all, it was as dull as dishwater.  Whilst eight-year-olds might have found it entertaining, there was nothing to sustain the adult audience at all.  The script lacked any clever ideas or wit, and almost sent me to sleep.  The characters were weak and cliched.  Why on earth the writer thought it was appropriate to condemn all glass-wearing, pony-tailed girls as dull, geeky plain-janes, I have no idea.  Similarly, the father-son relationship storyline grated terribly; father’s are supposed to love their sons, but this father seemed to feel nothing other than exasperation and frustration with his son.  He didn’t want to invest in his ideas and wanted to crush his world.  Their attempt at reconciliation was dire, and seemed to come very much on the father’s terms – when surely it was he who had been in the wrong.

I’m sure that the writer was trying to tell a positive story about relationships, but that was not how it came across to me.  What I saw was a crazy inventor kid, despised by his peers, who becomes despised by the town after a short period of success.  Moral – don’t be different or creative, but just blend in because it’s much easier.  I also saw Sam Sparks, an intelligent girl, who had reinvented herself as a blonde bimbo to gain respect; this worked, and she became popular.  When Flint persuaded her that she looked beautiful with her glasses and pony tail, she got snide comments from everyone else.  Then I saw a father and son struggling after the death of a wife and mother.  They didn’t see eye to eye, and had entirely different outlooks on the world.  Rather than the father being respectful of his son’s wishes, and quietly tolerating him, he wanted to crush his ideas and make him conform to the normal, dreary everyday world of the island.

Surely there’s something wrong with that?

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was a truly dire film.  Unoriginal, cliched, dull, boring and with no redeeming features.  Go and watch this at your peril.