Film: Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 (3D)
Starring: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Will Forte, James Caan, Andy Samberg, Benjamin Bratt, Neil Patrick Harris, Terry Crews, Kristen Schaal
Directors:
Cody Cameron,
Kris Pearn
What’s singularly appetising about ‘Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2’ (3D) are the visually luscious mouth-watering ways in which food is presented. But there’s more to the movie under review than just that.
Like Chris Miller and Phil Lord’s quirky 2009 adaptation of Judi Barrett’s best-selling children’s book of the same name (illustrated by her spouse, Ron Barrett), this sequel is the author and the film-makers encoded way of reminding society about the first of man’s three basic needs.
Wouldn’t life be delicious if we would never have to worry about our next meal? Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely, yes lovely, if India and other Third World countries could assuage the hunger of their famished populations with machines that produced food? In the reel world of Swallow Falls, young geek named Flint Lookwood invented a machine that converted his hometown’s weather to rain down all kinds of food in the 2009 film which stressed the importance of staying true to ourselves.
Your reviewer will desist from holding forth on feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, genetically modified foods or spirituality. Suffice to say, 2013’s creative sequel warns against gluttony, wolves in sheep’s clothing and jumping to conclusions apart from underlining themes of family and friendship.
After the food storm in the first film, Flint (Bill Hader) and his friends (weather gal-pal), Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), Baby Brent (Andy Samberg), Manny (Benjamin Bratt), Steve (Neil Patrick Harris), and Earl (Terry Crews) are forced to leave their home town.
This time around, Flint is sought out by his idol, or more specifically, the hologram of the illustrious Chester V (Will Forte) to come work for him at his prestigious Live Corp Company and make new and better inventions. What could be better than Flint’s Diatomic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator that converted raindrops into sweets, spaghetti and meatballs? Only now, Flint’s Food Replicator is making strange food-animal hybrids like fla-mangoes, shrimpanzees and banan-ostriches.
And Chester wants to get his hands on it. Can he be trusted? To set things right Flint and Co. must go “There and back again” (if I may quote JRR Tolkien). As they do, tacodiles roar and giant cheeseburgers gobble, leading the merry chase of food monsters. Go see. And enjoy.
Ronita Torcato
ronitatorcato@gmail.com
