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| Greek Title: “It’s Raining Meatballs” |
Directed by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Written by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller; Judi Barret, Ron Barrett
Starring: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Bruce Campbell
Running Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Rating: PG
Pre-Conceived Notions: For some reason, I conflate this with the song On Top of Spaghetti. I don’t know why. I think Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is based on a children’s book that I read in elementary school, and we sang On Top of Spaghetti in elementary school, and voilà! Conflation. It can happen to anybody.
Bit-O-Trivia from the IMDb Page: “Earl Devereaux has the exact opposite hairstyle as his voice actor, Mr. T. Instead of a T-shaped mohawk, Earl sports a T-shaped bald patch.”
1 hour, 30 minutes later…: I should add a disclaimer to this: Thanks to the viewing habits of my 4-and-a-half-year-old niece, I have seen this movie approximately 6 times. In various viewing scenarios: with the TV on mute, with the TV on in the background while reading, with the TV on and my niece showing me random things whilst doing a gymnastics routine on the couch—I could go on for quite some time, but I promise you that during at least one of those viewings, I was actually paying attention to what was going on onscreen.
It’s an interesting premise: Guy’s geekiness gives him feelings of inadequacy, Guy invents a machine that uses very questionable science to turn water into food, machine inexplicable gets rocketed into the clouds and starts raining victuals on the townsfolk, Guy meets Geeky Girl, they fall in love—you see where this is going.
This movie’s pacing was really spot on. There were no dead spots in the plot, and the animation really added a lot to the humor of the story. I especially liked watching the background in certain scenes, especially the one where Flint is talking to his father in the restaurant, and raining steaks are wreaking havoc with the diners. Who knew precipitating steak could have brilliant comedic timing? I think that’s a cinematic first. But I’m no Leonard Maltin, so don’t quote me on that one.
The WTF moment of the film for me is the whole scientific explanation behind turning water into food. It’s been a while since I saw the movie, and the explanation is nowhere to be found in the Quotes section on the IMDb page, but basically he manipulates DNA in water into the DNA of any kind of food he wants and it just magically happens. I know what you’re thinking. “But Stew. It’s a children’s movie. Food is raining from the sky. No logical explanation can be given that would make any sense.” But I call shenanigans on that one. Don’t use an actual thing to describe something that obviously can’t happen. You want children to think there’s a DNA sequence for pizza? Think of the deleterious effects that will have on the future scientists of America. People will get into biology so that they can save money on groceries. I don’t think so.
Final Thoughts: 5 out of 6 slices of pizza. This was a very engaging, very action-packed, very caloric movie. The characters were quirky, and the food looked good enough to eat. And also nostalgia played into it because there used to be a sardine factory in my hometown. It was awesome. There’s nothing like the smell of fish offal first thing in the morning. I miss it. Okay. I’m about to break my Sentimentality-O-Meter for this post, so I’m going to go.
