Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: BD Review
|
Page 1 of 3 Sony / 2009 / 90 Minutes / Rated PG / Street Date: January 5, 2010
What Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs lacks in terms of narrative brio and storytelling finesse (I promised myself I wouldn't reference Pixar in this review, so I won't...wait....crap!), it compensates for nicely with unbridled, goofy fun. I don't know how much relevance the film will have in a few months or years - it's definitely a movie of the moment - but as such, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is a kick in the pants, a movie that is light as air and perfectly engaging throughout. Based on the children's book by Judi and Ron Barrett, the setup here is simple: Inventor and kinda-sorta mad scientist Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) and weathergirl Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) find themselves on a journey to figure out why the precipitation in their town has done a switcheroo from your garden variety H2O to, well, food. There are villains, town weirdos - a veritable cast of looney tunes that all push the film's story along with a solid, steady pace.
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is one of the more pop-culture-skewing CGI animated films I've seen (up there with the Shreks), but somehow this film avoids the cutesiness that a certain green ogre and company have been guilty of for three installments: Like an extended SNL skit for kids, Cloudy is referential without being vacuous, present without being on-the-nose. And the fusion of hilarious voice talent (Bruce Campbell, Andy Samberg and many others contribute excellently to the revelry here) and a seriously striking visual palette make this film a real stunner. Yet where Pixar and its output (damn - I mentioned Pixar again!) will no doubt seem as classic in ten years as they did upon their initial releases, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs probably won't age all that well. It falls into that category of animated filmmaking where it will no doubt please youngsters right off the bat, and parents will find the film to be much more pleasantly loopy than they might expect, but next year there will no doubt be a different film-of-the-moment that will have taken its spot. |
Comments (5)