Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 3-D
- Year:2009
- Rating:G
- Cast:James Caan, Anna Faris, Bill Hader
- Release Date:November 26, 2009
- Distributor:Sony
- Running time:90 minutes
- Film Worth:$10.50
- FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Humorous, fun and sometimes downright odd family flick, that doesn’t address some of its thematic implications.
Flint Lockwood is a young scientist living on the island-town of Swallow Falls. Most of his inventions - like the spray-on shoes that regrettably never come off - are duds, but one crucial day he gets one to actually work. He dubs it The Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator - or FLDSMDFR. The machine, which hovers in the sky, fashions food from water, raining down an endless menu on a grateful Swallow Falls. But, of course, it all goes horribly wrong...
This 3-D CGI family comedy from Sony Pictures Animation has great characters and a sharp script which is free of wink-wink/nudge-nudge adult jokes. Flint (voiced by Saturday Night Live comic Bill Hader) is a flawed hero. His love interest, Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), a TV reporter whose sudden specialty is "food weather", is brainy but hides it under a ditzy veneer. Yet Flint encourages her to reveal her true smart self. Minor characters - voiced by James Caan, Benjamin Bratt and The A-Team icon Mr. T - are also wonderfully "drawn" and realised.
Most of the madcap, jaw-dropping action scenes are state-of-the-rapidly-evolving art. The 3-D is so well woven into the film's fabric that you're scarcely aware of it, but it comes to the fore, quite magically, during the action sequences.
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, however, has a bloated, claustrophobic finale that is, in one respect, downright weird (witness the giant walking headless chooks). But there's something else more troubling - the film doesn't ponder the more noble implications of its invention (which, considering technology's progress, may not be so wild!). No-one realises that Flint's machine could feed the world's hungry, which is a little odd. Family flicks, however, are under no obligation other than to entertain, and this often very funny film certainly meets its obligation.
