starring Bill Hader and Anna Faris
In a nutshell: Limited appeal for adults, but at least its not offensively auful. The kind of movie I'd want my kinds to watch.
Quick synopsis: An inventor trying to create a machine that makes food materialize out of thin air accidentally sends it skyward where it interacts with weather patterns and dumps food back upon the citizens Swallow Falls
Content: Much like Where the Wild Things Are, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is based on a children's book that would take no longer than five minutes to read. But thats where the similarities end. Spike Jonze took Wild Things and made a movie about childhood for the people for whom the book has a certain nostalgia. Phil Lord and Chris Miller extrapolated the very short story of Cloudy into enough of a screenplay to cover a 90 minute feature film (barely). But it's not for the people who will remember the book. The people who will enjoy the movie are almost certainly too young to realize it was based on anything at all.
I was shocked and delighted when I first heard about this project. It was one of my favorite books in my elementary school years. But I had absolutely no idea that it was popular enough to merit this sort of treatment. And, as it turns out, Cloudy doesn't really have any nostalgia factor to it at all. In fact, the only similarity between the book and movie is that food falls from the sky. Nevertheless I wanted to see what it was all about considering my history and the positive reviews.
I divide "children's' movies" into 4 categories: Those that will appeal to adults only (Wild Things - these are probably not kids' films at all), some to kids only, some to both (most Pixar movies, Shrek 1&2), and some to no one because have too many references for kids to understand but are too kiddie for the adults (Shark Tale). Cloudy fits neatly into the second category. There's not a whole lot there for anyone over the age of 12, but it's a pleasant enough movie with pretty cool animation (even though I didn't even get to see it in 3D), a good voice cast and, it's not filled with bathroom humor. In other words, it's the kind of movie I'd want my kids to watch if I had any. But I'd likely pick up my laptop and start checking my fantasy baseball team, rather than unwittingly getting sucked in as with my Pixar faves.
Rolling rankings:
1. Up in the Air (#182)
2. Avatar (#176)
3. Sherlock Holmes (#178)
4. Big Fan (#180)
5. The Cove (#177)
6. The September Issue (#183)
7. Julie and Julia (#175)
8. Kids (#179)
9. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (#184)
10. Extract (#181)
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