Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a 2009 American 3D computer-animated/CGI animated science fiction comedy film produced by Sony Pictures Animation and is loosely based on the 1978 children's book of the same name by Judi and Ron Barrett.

It was written and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller in their directorial debuts, and stars the voices of Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Bruce Campbell, James Caan, Bobb'e J. Thompson, Andy Samberg, Mr. T, Benjamin Bratt, Neil Patrick Harris, Al Roker, Lauren Graham, and Will Forte.

The film would receive a sequel in 2013 entitled Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.

Plot
When hard times hit Swallow Falls, its townspeople can only afford to eat sardines. Flint Lockwood, a failed inventor, thinks he has the answer to the town's crisis. He builds a machine that converts water into food, and becomes a local hero when tasty treats fall from the sky like rain. But when the machine spins out of control and threatens to bury the whole world under giant mounds of food, Flint finds he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

Why It's Raining Meatballs (and other food)

 * 1) The concept of food falling from the sky is wonderfully awesome.
 * 2) It has some pretty smooth animation for the food, especially for the spaghetti tornado.
 * 3) Very cartoony-style animation.
 * 4) It has some pretty cool vocal performances, especially from Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Mr T. and Bruce Campbell.
 * 5) The design of the overall feature, be it the characters, mutated foods or even the townsfolk's distinct movements, is amazing, taking full advantage of its cartoon nature.
 * 6) It has a fantastically glorious score from Mark Mothersbaugh, which is very moving and charming.
 * 7) The ice cream snow and jello castle scenes are highly memorable.
 * 8) The film is absolutely hilarious, almost perfectly satirizing the disaster genre in the third act.
 * 9) Mayor Shelbourne is a very entertaining and actually kinda threatening villain.
 * 10) This movie introduced the Phil Lord and Christopher Miller filmmaker duo to the world, and their direction is tremendous. Following this, they would later continue to produce and direct other great movies, such as the Jump Street duology, The Lego Movie and especially Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
 * 11) All of the characters are all equally charming and fun, especially Flint Lockwood, Officer Earl and Brent.
 * 12) Despite the main conflict being food, the film holds a surprising amount of suspense.
 * 13) There is a nice subplot regarding Flint's relationship with his father, which leads to some rather sweet moments. It’s also a nice change of pace to see Tim try to accept Flint’s lifestyle of inventing instead of shutting it down completely, only to have trouble communicating it.
 * 14) The film does indeed follow the plot of the book with entire illustrations recreated for the movie with stunning nods to Ron Barret's artwork.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The movie relies on some clichés, like the subplot between Flint and Sam and the "main character is bullied for being different" cliche (even if it's decently used).
 * 2) While still likable, Brent can be a bit annoying.
 * 3) While the animation is undoubtedly fantastic, the characters are a little poorly designed. There are some great designs, like Tim and Earl, but the rest of them come across as too simplistic and don’t translate well into computer animation, particularly Flint.
 * 4) Misleading title and false advertising: Despite being called "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" (something that the poster depicts as well), it only rains meatballs during the beginning of the climax.

Reception
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs received very positive reviews, who praised its colorful visuals, humor, characterizations, and voice acting, while the simple character designs and plot were said to be unfitting. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a "Certified Fresh" rating of 86% based on 142 reviews with an average rating of 7.3/10. The consensus statement reads, "Quirky humor, plucky characters and solid slapstick make this family comedy a frenetically tasty time at the movies.". On Metacritic it has a weighted average score of 66 out of 100, based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, while IMDB scores a film a 7/10 rating.

It was a modest box office success, earning $243 million worldwide.

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