Thanks to its huge load of successful jokes, an original story and beautifully rendered, delicious food, the first Cloud with a Chance of Meatballs was an unexpected success. The story about how inventor Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) designs a machine that can change water into food, the FLDSMDFR, which broke and made it rain food was very entertaining. When animated movies are a success you can always expect a second movie to be made, which is now available on DVD and Blu Ray. The FLDSMDFR, which seemed to have been disabled in the first movie, seems to still be working. Instead of influencing the weather it now creates something else: Living food, foodimals.
The movie starts 8 minutes after the first part and the people of the town are visited by helicopters from Live Corp, which is led by its charismatic CEO Chester V. Flint has been watching his show since he was a kid and is a huge fan. When he is asked by Chester V if he wants to help he simply can not refuse. Together with his friends he start a new adventure, in search of the FLDSMDFR. Food no longer looks as they’s expect.
The world which Sony Pictures Animation creates for this movie is extremely colourful and imaginative. Lots of thought has been put into the creating of food based animals. Examples are Hippotatomus, Shrimpanzees, Mosquitoasts, Apple Pie-thon and Susheep. All that food is regularly used as the punchline of jokes, with “There is a leak in the boat” is one of my favourites.
Cloudy 2 can be best described as a comical adventure/monster movie. It quickly becomes clear that Chester V is up to more than he initially shows. It is obvious that this character and his company are clearly inspired by Steve Jobs and Apple. His product regularly receives updates to a new version and his Zen like appearance shows similarities as well. The DVD had some fun extras and it turns out the movie even has a specific foodimal which is hidden in many scenes and could be compared with bigfoot sightings. Although the second movie isn’t as good as the first one it still is a lot of fun.
I really didn’t like this one as much as the original. The jokes seemed too forced (or obvious, one of my pet peeves) and the story was nowhere near as original as the first film; contradictory behavior by Flint and Sam meant the film’s continuity went out the window from almost frame one.
That said: the kids loved it. So I guess that’s a win?
Yeah, I know how you felt about this one. I never found the jokes forced and I hadn’t seen the original in a while, so didn’t notice any continuity issues. Yeah, the kids loved it indeed.
This one doesn’t hold up to the first, but it was never going to. The jokes still land and the food animals are amazingly designed.
Personally, I would score the film a little lower (I think I gave it a 6/10) but agree with everything you’ve said in your review.
Thanks a lot Chris.
This one doesn’t hold up to the first, but it was never going to. The jokes still land and the food animals are amazingly designed.
Personally, I would score the film a little lower (I think I gave it a 6/10) but agree with everything you’ve said in your review.
No, it is a different film and like you say the jokes still work! Thanks Chris.
This was fun. Back in 2013 this kind of got lost in the wake of hits like Frozen and Despicable Me 2, but it was cute.
Understandable it was, but still it was entertaining enough.
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