Cheeseburger with just a bit too much cheese
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is just another example of how Sony Pictures Animation is coming together as a collective. It use to be that Pixar and Dreamworks were the only two animation film studios on the market. They ruled the roost with the Shreks and the Toy Storys of the world. When Sony Pictures opened their animation division it really underwhelmed many critics in comparison to what the other two studios were producing. As of late, somewhere around Open Season, I could see Sony making some really strong strides in upping the entertainment and making the animation more unique than specific. What I mean by that is that they took a story and created the animation around it. The details didn’t matter as much as the entertainment value. So, if you don’t see specific fur strands floating on Steve the monkey then you woiuldn’t take too much notice. You would enjoy his cute personality more than his body details.
In my opinion, this is where Sony started to not only catch up, but also surpass the top two studios in a way.
Watch their latest animated feature, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and you’ll understand why this is the case.
The story here is simple. Based on a book by the same name, Flint Lockwood is a young scientist, who just wants to do great things for a small no-name town. Constantly screwing up good ideas, Flint finally has one work. He builds a machine that takes in water and spits out food. When the machine is accidentally launched into the atmosphere over his small ocean town, the weather starts to get funny. Instead of rain or wind it’s now cheeseburgers and fries. Flint’s machine not only worked, but he can now dial up any food anyone wants. The popularity of the phenomena is only enhanced thanks to the reporting of a junior weather person named Sam Sparks.The once dead town begins to thrive in tourism and revel in relevance. Regretfully, for every good intention there is a bad after taste. The machine begins to go haywire and food constantly comes out of it; it also gets bigger and bigger. Fearing that he might lose control, Flint aims to put an end to the machine before the entire town is covered in a food mess.
First things first, he animation is positively one of the better jobs I’ve seen in a while. At this point in animation history, there isn’t much that you can do to screw-up the look and feel of things. All the studios have pretty much pulled even with what they can produce. If you’re going in expecting something that looks impressive, you’ll be happy.
The unique characters introduced make this story work. You have a young scientist in Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) that plays the guy with the never-dying dream of scientific success. Bill Hader does a superb job with developing and maintaining the character’s charm. Complimented with Hader is Anna Faris’ Sam Sparks. Faris, who is notoriously put into ‘dumb blonde’ roles, is refreshing and intelligent as the spunky Sam Sparks. Balancing out all the characters is the father figure to Flint (well, he is Flint’s father) Tim Lockwood, played by James Caan. His character is important as the voice of reason. Finally, Mr. T sports the ever-hyped officer Earl Devereaux. He is the comedy relief and the living punishment for Lockwood’s mistakes. All of these characters together equal out to a solid cast, which help to develop the story smoothly.
As for the story, I felt like it was a very good story. The movie will get you hungry, so eat before you watch. It’s a wacky concept and funny as can be. The only problem with this movie is that it seems a bit long in the tooth towards the end. You’ll get to the middle of the film and start to expect a change over to the final build, but the movie seems to stretch this point a bit longer. You can guess that Flint and his dad are going to butt heads at some point. The movie waits too long for that to happen and the gimmick of the food gets a bit old in the process. As a kid I think this would be forgivable. As an adult, I just want the wrap-up to begin.
Again, this is my only issue with a rather entertaining film tha Sony should be very proud of.
Mmmmm….. blu-ray (DROOL)
Over the last year I think that blu-ray has taken some large strides in the animation department. Improving quality and actually giving animation the proper HD upgrade has been a long road for this format. Thankfully, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a solid film that demonstrates how well this can be done. No graininess or artifacts, the movie comes through with one of the more impressive displays of visuals on blu-ray. The transfer was solid, as was the audio that was remastered with it. Visually and audibly this is what blu-ray should look like.
As for features, here’s what you’re getting:
• Full frame and Widescreen presentation of the feature
• Commentary
• Feeding America PSA
• Trailers
• All the material from the 1-Disc DVD, plus:
• Featurette: “How Food Falls: The Making of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”
• Featurette: “Voice Off”
• Deleted Scenes
• Miranda Cosgrove “Raining Sunshine: Music Video
• Interactive “Raining Sunshine” Sing-a-Long
• Food Fight Game
• All the material from the 1-Disc and 2-disc DVDs, plus:
• A DVD of the film
• PSP Digital Copy of the film included on the Blu-ray Disc, transferable exclusively via the PlayStation®3
• “Splat Mode!”
• 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
• BD-Live Enabled
That’s a solid amount of features for a kid’s film.
