Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 review

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 may be distantly removed from the children’s book that inspired it, but here is an animated sequel that is as bright, imaginative and funny as its predecessor. 

The film opens where the first instalment ended. Eccentric inventor Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) has seeming destroyed his machine that turns water into food. The world is once again safe from raging food weather. Swallows Falls is evacuated for clean up, but the machine is still active after all and is now creating “foodimals” like shrimpanzees, mosquitoasts and watermelophants.

Flint is sent back to the island by his idol and new employer Chester V (Will Forte) to destroy the machine. The rest of the cast returns for the latest adventure as well including Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), Brent McHale (Andy Samberg), Earl Devereaux (Terry Crews, replacing Mr. T), Manny (Benjamin Bratt), his father (James Caan) and his monkey, Steve (Neil Patrick Harris doing wonders with monosyllabic responses).

It is clear early on that Chester has malicious motives, but naturally, it takes nearly the entire run time of the film for Flint to pick up on this even as his friends tell him Chester is suspicious. But it isn’t the plot of Cloudy 2 that makes it entertaining. This is the kind of movie where the storyline is merely a clothesline for laughs.

The film is brimming over with creative visuals — particularly with the foodimals — and a brilliant colour palette. Refreshingly, this is a computer animated feature that is proud to look like a cartoon instead of striving for photo realism. There’s a welcomed Looney Tunes-logic to much of this world in terms of design and humour.

The filmmakers have taken the Airplane approach to comedy: throw as many jokes on the screen as possible and see what sticks. Nearly every scene has things going in the foreground and background making this a great film for repeat viewings as there will be new jokes to spot each time.

Alec Kerr