In general children’s comedy animations can go one of two ways; either they go all out with the slapstick and the colour, directing themselves straight at a young audience, or they try to find some sort of middle ground between adults and children by lazily re-hashing jokes or parodying other films whilst also including some fart jokes to keep the kids happy.
The larger end of the market tends to swing in favour of the latter, as the downturn of promising franchises like Shrek (2001-2007, though a fourth film is already in production) show an abandonment of narrative and well constructed jokes in favour of lazy spoof material.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, based on the much loved children’s book of the same name, is pleasingly reminiscent of the original Shrek; never letting the parody drown the rather charming storyline.
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Bill Hader is Flint Lockwood, a young man with aspirations of becoming a great inventor.
Whilst his disapproving father tries to sway him in the direction of the rather dull family business, Flint has big dreams of saving his hometown’s food problem; and invents a machine that turns water into food. After an initial test the machine breaks down, causing hamburgers and all manner of foodstuffs to fall from the sky.
The ensuing rain of food not only causes Flint to become a local celebrity, but also catches the eye of a national weather reporter Sam Sparks (Anna Faris). After the greedy Mayor’s manipulation of Flint’s machine, giant food begins to threaten the town; and only Flint and his friends can hope to save the town and its residents from total destruction.
Like the first Shrek film; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs boasts an impressive cast of character actors (from Evil Dead’s Bruce Campbell to the legendary James Caan), contains state of the art CGI animation, keeps it’s narrative on the straight and narrow and finishes up with a rounded moral conclusion. The film also presents some wonderful sight gags, as well as a neat script and solid direction.
If anything the animation is more charming in Cloudy than it is in Shrek and others of that ilk: as the cartoonish characters are distinctly more Pixar than Dreamworks (although uninvolved with either). The jokes are occasionally tremendous, and even though the laughs dry up once the disaster move pastiches kick in; the script is tight enough to keep both adults and children excited to the conclusion.
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