Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the feature-film directing debut by How I Met Your Mother’s executive producers, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, faces a problem of articulation. This 3-D animated adaptation of the beloved children’s book by Judi and Ron Barrett has no reason to rise above the usual animated schlock. And yet the care and concern in every aspect—from the beautifully detailed animation to fully developed secondary characters makes it one of the most enjoyable films to find its way into theaters this year.
“Have you ever felt … different?” From the first line we’re off on a typical animated movie plotline. And like any good kid’s movie, the story has a clear beginning, middle, and end: Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) has always wanted to be an inventor in the recession-wracked town of Swallow Falls. Its sardine-manufacturing economy has shut down after the world discovered, as one newspaper headline puts it, that “Sardines Are Super Gross.” Soon Flint invents a machine that turns water into food but gets it stuck in the sky, making some big changes in the process for himself and the town. The plot, then, drags a bit before getting to its comfortingly predictable conclusion.
At only 90 minutes, jokes come from every angle, with enough suspense and inventiveness to keep things entertaining. Every plot point set up at the beginning comes back later, just when needed, like a perfectly ordered set of gears. Rather than getting bogged down in the how and why of this obviously fantastical situation, the movie treats it as, in the words of Swallow Fall’s mayor, “Blah blah blah science, science bigger!” This means that the plot is just engaging enough to take us where we need to go, but never so weighty as to bog us down—a sort of flippant sincerity.
The people in Swallow Falls are all eyes, huge reflective pools in the middle of their oversized heads. Flint’s dad, a taciturn fisherman, seems to be made solely of eyebrows and a mustache. Great care is taken in even the smallest detail of animation—window reflections, advertisements on buildings—but it never feels fussy. The food that falls from the sky seems gloriously tactile, and the 3D effect, which makes me feel giddy and childlike despite being an overpriced gimmick, allows for bouncy cheeseburgers to fall directly on our heads. Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is a simple, well-crafted movie that manages to breathe new life into the satisfying contours of well-worn story lines.
