Distributor: Sony Pictures Releasing

      If you’re unfamiliar with the material, you might be cynical about its potential beyond mere imagery, but don’t be. (Fortunately, I was able to jump into the action right away, having loved Judi and Ron Barrett’s book as a kid.)  In a year of emotionally inept animated films like Ice Age 3, Monsters vs. Aliens, and Pixar’s vastly overrated Up, this one stands out as the most involving on emotional and narrative levels. Flint Lockwood (the voice of Bill Hader) lives on an island in the Atlantic where life is monotonous and people eat nothing but sardines. While Flint’s simpleton father (James Caan) wants to see his son join him working at his fishing tackle and canned sardine shop, Flint has bigger aspirations to become a renowned inventor. Working all his life out of what evolves into a cutting-edge lab above their house, Flint devises a machine that converts water into food to solve the people’s dissatisfaction with sardines. He fires it up and suddenly all kinds of food is falling from the sky – not just the title dish, but burgers and Jello and pancakes and more. On the scene to report is a cute but geeky-on-the-inside TV meteorologist named Sam (Anna Faris), who Flint quickly falls for. 

     Of course, the film is a visual delight and, even though all of the food is animated, you’d be torturing yourself by seeing it on an empty stomach. The computer graphics use pastel colors that look like they’ve come straight out of a crayon box, as periwinkle ice cream and burnt orange egg yolks come splashing onto the screen. All of the action sequences are attractively animated. And in glorious 3D no less – the kind that actually makes use of the new digital technology by creating newfound senses depth and movement, making the $2-4 surcharge as well-spent as it’ll ever be. (I have my doubts about whether 3D should be used at all, but that’s a topic for another piece.) Behind all the fancy-schmancy stuff, though, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs also nails the most important animation fundamental: character design. From the ambitious-looking Flint to his eyebrow-concealed father (you’ll know what I mean when you see him), the movie proves that the image of a character tells us just as much about them as the things they say and do.

     However, as I mentioned in the first paragraph of this review, the characters themselves are just as impressive as the film’s appearance. Flint is more than just the average young man trying to find acceptance in a world that doesn’t understand him; he’s an embodiment of the viewer’s sense of wonder. Watching his passions, however simplistic, in full gear and then manifested by food precipitating from the sky, it’s hard not to find oneself inspired on some level. And Flint’s romantic tension with Sam couldn’t be sweeter and less conventional, even if the presence of a love interest is conventional by design. The movie owes so much of this success and depth to the voice-cast, led by Hader and Farris, who give the wacky material a grounded sense of human reality. Despite having to speak through computer images, Hader comes across as being just as funny and zany and Farris just as charming and attractive as they do in person. This is precisely the magic of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: it’s equal parts endearing and whimsical. While it may not, at a scant 90 minutes, be as complex or as refined as Pixar’s best entries in the genre, it’s the best animated film I’ve seen all year.

-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews

Review Published on: 10.5.2009

Screened on: 9.19.2009 at the Krikorian Vista Village 15 in Vista, CA.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is rated PG and runs 90 minutes.

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