CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS - Sony Delivers a Great Animated Film

Apparently I'm one of about two people never to have read CLOUDY in book form. So I didn't know what to expect from the film.

SPOILERS RAINING DOWN LIKE GIANT PANCAKES

CLOUDY tells the story of Flint Lockwood, a wannabe inventor who can't ever seem to invent anything useful. While trying to invent a device that turns water into food, he accidentally launches it into the sky. Where it works. This attracts the attention from a cute wannabe weather intern-turned reporter, as well as the greedy mayor of the dying town. Flint becomes a hero and a bit stuck up, and the mayor repositions the town as an international tourist destination for its raining food. What Flint really wants is the respect of his misunderstanding fisherman father. Eventually, the machine mutates food to the point of self-awareness, and the world is about to be drowned under a foodstorm of epic proportions. Flint and a motley crew have to launch a sky-assault on the machine.

So -- how's the film stack up? Pretty darn good. The script, by directors Lord & Miller, is tight. There's enough character stuff to motivate all the action. There are fantastic gags with Flint's bum inventions, including ratbirds, a crazed TV with legs, and spray-on shoes, and the team behind the movie milks every last bit of humor and inventiveness out of raining food (from snowball fights with ice cream to a spaghetti twister).

There are a few weak points that stem from poor script choices. The TV producer/cameraman turns out to be a conveniently handy doctor/pilot/whatever. While this is played for jokes, it comes out of nowhere and takes away from the story a bit. And there are two instances in which Flint should fall to his death but doesn't, simply because the writers can't seem to come up with a good reason for him not to. In the first, he falls during the spaghetti twister, coming to rest on a series of parachutes/slides/whatever -- his labcoat opens like a parachute, then he catches an umbrella Mary Poppins-style, then he falls on some stuff, before finally climbing down a conveniently placed ladder to safety. Lord & Miller try to play it off for laughs, but it's really an instance of the script needing to show him doing something clever to save himself rather than lucking into it. Unfortunately, they repeat the same trick during the finale, in which Flynn falls out of the exploding food machine to his imminent death. Only for some reason, he's saved by a flock of ratbirds -- birds that up until now were nothing but a terrible nuisance.

These are relatively small flaws and don't detract from the otherwise tight plotting and solid character work. And the film looks great, with some truly impressive CG animation.