Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is an animated family film directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. The film follows Flint (Bill Hader), an inventor who dreams of becoming a famous scientist. One day Flint invents a machine that can make food rain from the sky, everything seems to be going well, until the machine starts to malfunction.
I have been meaning to watch this for some time and a few nights ago I did, I have to say for the most part I enjoyed it, but there were a few issues that kept it from being great.
Firstly the imagination is commendable, I thought it was wonderfully unique and I have never seen anything else like this. The animation is also great, I thought it looked distinctive and well proportioned; the food also looked really appetising.
Secondly, this film has a lot of heart. I thought it handled the theme of fathers and sons really well and the final scene between Flint and his father was moving and brought a tear to my eye. However, the same flair for emotion wasn’t carried over into the other characters and Flint’s relationship with the other characters particularly Sam (Anna Faris), was weak and unconvincing.
My main issue with this film was the humour, it really didn’t land for me. Humour is subjective I know, but the humour in this film skewed towards kids and I didn’t find any layers to the comedy that might have appealed to me or other age groups.
Overall, a good effort with a lot heart, but the childish humour and the poor character development stop this film from being as good as it could be.
Pros.
The father son relation between Flint and his dad
The animation
The imagination
Cons.
The comedy
The poor side characters and weak interpersonal relationships
3/5
Reviewed by Luke
Another Millennial Reviewer 