The movie’s explanation for this strange phenomenon is one Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader), an aspiring inventor whose contraptions routinely end in disaster. Constantly locked away in a towering, self-made laboratory in his father’s (James Caan) backyard, Flint has come up with such doozies as spray-on shoes (too bad they don’t come off) and a translator that allows his moustache-obsessed pet monkey Steve (Neil Patrick Harris) to express his minimal thoughts in English (example: “lick ... lick ... lick”). Flint’s latest contraption is a device that uses radiation to turn water into any kind of food he wants, but it doesn’t have quite enough power to work. He solves that problem by plugging it directly into the local power station, which results in an explosive catastrophe that is badly timed with his small island town’s unveiling of Sardineland, a sardine-themed amusement park that the ambitious mayor (Bruce Campbell) hopes will save the island from financial ruin.

Flint’s machine is launched into the stratosphere where it interacts with a cloud system and creates a rainfall of hamburgers, which excites the town to no end and fills the mayor’s head with visions of tourism and money. Thus, Flint is tasked to use his invention to ensure literal manna from the sky three times a day at the townspeople’s request, and any food that isn’t eaten is launched into a huge pile just outside of town. All of this is being covered by Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), a plucky meteorological intern who happens to be in the right place at the right time and also provides a convenient romantic interest for the otherwise introverted Flint. Problems arise, however, when the invention starts to spin out of control, producing larger and larger food that threatens to destroy the town with spaghetti twisters, massive pancakes, and, of course, giant meatballs.

Not surprisingly, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs has a fast and furious pace that bears little resemblance to the easier pleasures of the book, although that is not to say that the film itself is lacking in pleasure. Rather, Lord and Miller have crafted a movie that is funny and at times wonderfully weird, and even has a few meaningful things to say about the nature of greed (literalized in the mayor’s gluttonous growth in size), the inanity of faded celebrity (hence Andy Samburg’s perpetually adolescent “Baby” Brent, whose claim to fame was posing in a sardine ad as a tyke), and the dangers inherent in trying to fit in (which we see in both Sam’s denial of her own intelligence to escape the “nerd” label and Flint eventually endangering the town because he doesn’t want to disappoint anyone). There is also, of course, the requisite family dynamic, with Flint trying to gain his gruff but loving father’s approval.

Lord and Miller have particular fun punching up the film’s various montages by having Flint briskly and enthusiastically narrating his own actions, which both mocks the cinematic cliché and also underscores how Flint spends way too much time alone. The film’s real treat, though, is its outrageous visual design, which detours deep into the surreal during the climax when Flint and company fly directly into a food storm and find themselves stranded in a gastronomic netherworld high in the sky that includes such dangers as a peanut-brittle-spiked tunnel and an army of headless chickens (did I mention that the food becomes sentient?). The final third of the story plays as an amusing parody of Roland Emmerich-style disaster movies (Flint’s solution to shutting down his invention is taken directly from 1996’s Independence Day ... minus a Macbook). It doesn’t always make a lot of sense, but it certainly provides a feast for the eyeballs.

Copyright ©2010 James Kendrick

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