'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs' cooks up cautionary animated tale
"Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" is a breezy, witty, fun little 3-D animated fantasy about a young scientist who invents a machine that can convert water into food and has it rain from the sky over his town.
But before anyone can shout something humanitarian like "Now we can feed the world's hungry!," the conniving mayor (voiced by horror film icon Bruce Campbell) instantly fixates on the food-making weather machine as a tourist attraction that can save the faltering local economy.
Like the business-minded mayor of Amity Island in "Jaws," he lives to regret his commercial priorities.
"Cloudy" is an expansion of the popular children's book of the same title (written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett), and has been rendered in eye-popping, brightly colored, richly detailed 3-D imagery from Sony Pictures Animation.
"SNL" star Bill Hader plays Flint Lockwood, the scientific hero. His mother believes in him, but his emotionally inarticulate father Tim (James Caan), who runs a local bait and tackle shop, doesn't understand why his techno-wizard son can't just be normal.
After his mother dies, Flint spends most of his time in his super-sized laboratory in his backyard, perfecting his food-making precipitator along with his pet monkey Steve (Neil Patrick Harris), equipped with a thought translator device.
The obligatory romantic subplot kicks into gear upon the arrival of a weather reporter intern named Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), who hides her intelligent nerdiness under the guise of a beautiful on-camera reporter. It's clear the moment they meet that they're a match made in MENSA heaven.
As if it's not enough to deal with blossoming romance and dad-son guilt issues, Flint still feels belittled by the town bully, the insufferable "Baby" Brent ("SNL" star Andy Samberg), who has been living off the dubious distinction of posing for a local ad campaign when he was a toddler.
Everyone in town is elated when Flint's invention starts dropping hamburgers from the sky. Then eggs, then flapjacks, and whatever else Flint programs.
But when his device gets overloaded, the food gets too big, and soon, townspeople are fleeing giant corncobs, tomatoes and pizza slices as if Rick Bayless launched a storm of biblical proportions.
"Cloudy" was directed by screenwriters Chris Miller and Phil Lord, who keep the many action sequences crisp and exciting, and put plenty of zingers into the dialogue.
The main cast is rounded out by Mr. T as a local cop, Earl, who's seen way too many 1970s blaxploitation kung-fu movies and goes bouncing around town with zealous pride in his job.
Kids will love the fantastic creations that Flint conjures up, especially the jiggly castle made of Jell-O.
My only misgiving about "Cloudy" is that while it talks the talk about intelligence being a good quality, its plot argues the opposite: that intelligence only gets you into trouble, causes damage, endangers lives and makes women want to look like cliched bookworms.
Even though Flint's intelligence eventually solves the problems, that doesn't make up for the destruction and emotional stress it caused in the first place.
To me, that's not very smart.
<p class="factboxheadblack">"Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs"</p> <p class="News">Three stars</p> <p class="News"><b>Starring:</b> Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell, Mr. T, Neil Patrick Harris, Al Roker, Benjamin Bratt, Lauren Graham, Will Forte </p> <p class="News"><b>Directed by:</b> Phil Lord and Chris Miller</p> <p class="News"><b>Other:</b> A Columbia Pictures release. Rated PG. 90 minutes.</p>