8.3/10
A winner in every respect
Posted : 3 months ago on 6 February 2024 06:148.3/10
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Funny and imaginative with incredible visuals
Posted : 2 years, 1 month ago on 20 March 2022 01:11The animation itself is absolutely incredible. The colours are superb, the backgrounds are lush and the characters are well-modelled. The best of the visuals is the one with the spaghetti tornado, utterly jaw-dropping in every sense of the word. The score is quirky and fun, with a nice end credits song, while the story is very original and imaginative. The script is another strength, so many funny moments without feeling too much.
The voice acting is wonderful, bringing to life characters that are appealing, charming and quirky. Bill Hader does a great job as the eccentric Flint, while Anna Farris is wonderful as bubbly Sam. James Caan is good also as Flint's father and Bruce Campbell is a great surprise as the mayor who swells as a consequence of eating the falling food. My only complaints are the pacing;some scenes felt rushed so we weren't given as much time as we would've liked to breathe while some towards the end dragged, and the repetition of "I love you son" and such got a tad too mushy. Overall, this film is very good and enjoyable. 8/10 Bethany Cox
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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Posted : 4 years, 3 months ago on 11 January 2020 10:33Cuter and more imaginative than I imagined, even if it does feel a little bit like microwaved wonder and imagination, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a minor delight. Geeky wunderkind grows up (Bill Hader) to invent a machine that transforms water into food so that it rains down hamburgers, for instance. Once shunned in his small town of Chewandswallow, one of many food puns, he finds himself embraced as a savior until it all goes sideways.
It must go sideways otherwise there would be no plot. There has to be a romance (Anna Faris, weathergirl trying to make good). There must be a long-standing rival turned friend (Andy Samberg, playing cocky turned humble). Cloudy hits all these beats and throws in a goofy animal sidekick (Neil Patrick Harris as the “voice” of a monkey), daddy issues (James Caan), and a devious politician (Bruce Campbell playing it up like the glorious ham he is) for good measure. Much like the junk food that rains down from the sky, Cloudy does have a sense of fast food discount menu to its assembly of parts.
Yet Cloudy does offer up numerous humorous sights, like parodies of disaster and horror movie clichés by giving us tornados of spaghetti and meatballs, or a “home planet” that must be blown up that is populated by sentient food like vicious gummi bears and rotisserie chickens. Even if the film does feel like it was made from various previously made parts, there’s still a fun sense of chaos and whimsy on display throughout and the stellar voice cast to liven things up. I’m not sure if consumerism and gluttony can more perfectly be satirized than they are in the sight of Campbell’s ever-widening mayor, but Caan and Hader’s father-son dynamic gives the anarchy a grounding and pleasing heart.
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A surprising animated movie
Posted : 13 years, 4 months ago on 26 December 2010 10:02When I heard about this movie, I have to admit it, I thought it sounded really daft but, surprisingly, the whole thing turned out to be really damned entertaining. Indeed, I thought it would be all right but it was actually much better than I thought it would be. Basically, it is actually a very original animated movie, really weird but in a good way, with some very funny parts. Since then, Chris Miller and Phil Lord have then become some major players in Hollywood thanks to the success of this movie, ’21 Jump Street’ and ‘The Lego Movie’ and while all these projects sounded really silly on paper, they didn’t chicken out, they completely went for it with some really impressive results. Here, they managed to make a fun and rather surrealist animated feature and, of course, the whole concept didn’t make any sense but who cares? Instead, you get some hilarious characters, some awesome jokes and one-liners and I actually enjoyed it even more after numerous re-watches. A couple of years later, of course, they came up with a sequel (without Miller and Lord on board) and even though they developed a nice new concept with these mutant food animals, this 2nd installment didn’t have much else to offer, I’m afraid. Anyway, I was a really fun animated feature and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.
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