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Cuter 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.
