If you haven’t seen the first Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs don’t worry, the opening of this sequel gives a full run-down of it. Wow. How lazy can writers be? I’m surprised a voice-over didn’t start the segment with, “Previously on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs…”
If you haven’t seen the first Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs don’t worry, the opening of this sequel gives a full run-down of it. Wow. How lazy can writers be? I’m surprised a voice-over didn’t start the segment with, “Previously on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs…”
I guess I’m expecting too much. After all, this wasn’t a movie…it was a 95 minute video game. The entire movie the characters run through the island, trying to find things, save things, capture things…I kept looking up at the top of the screen to see what the score was. At one point, I leaned over to my son and said, “Nice jump!” He said, “Thank you.” I guess he thought he was playing a game, too. Especially since their new “thing” is to call out which characters they are before they watch any TV show or movie.
“I’m Flint Lockwood!”
“Not fair! I wanted to be Flint Lockwood.”
“I called him. You can be the girl, Sam Sparks!”
“I don’t want to be the girl…Mommy! Nate told me to be the girl.”
“OK, stop fighting you two. I’ll be the girl. Zeke, you can be the monkey, Steve. He’s the funniest one”
“Fine! I’ll be Steve, but I’m not happy about it.”
The plot? Hmmm, let’s see…
Flint Lockwood and his cohorts, Sam Sparks, Brent McHale, Manny, Steve, and Earl are joined by his dad, Tim Lockwood, to save their beloved Island, Swallow Falls, from man-eating foodimals. Or so they think. Flint’s TV scientist idol, Chester V, is the head CEO of Live Corp, a company dedicated to the “betterment of mankind.” Or so they think. Chester V and his assistant / invention, Barb (an orangutan outfitted with a human brain), convince Flint that they need his help to destroy his invention the Diatomic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator (but I thought that was destroyed in the first movie) before it’s foodimals learn to swim off the island and destroy the world! Or so he thinks…
HUH? Exactly. I had to lean over and answer my son’s plot questions during the entire movie, on the drive home and while we were getting ready for bed.
“But Mommy…Why are the foodimals trying to eat the people in the orange vests again?”
(sigh..)“Because all the people who made the first movie, wanted to make a sequel so they could make more money.”
Th best part of the movie for us was Steve the monkey voiced by Neil Patrick Harris. Very funny. Watch him the entire time. And all the mash-ups of foods and animals to make the foodimals…very clever. You can watch this movie in a theater, or just wait for it to come to a Wii near you.
Maryellen Hooper
