Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - Rated PG - 90 min - Released 2009

There are only a few movies that I have come across that are truly clean throughout the entirety of the film; this is definitely one of those films.  If you have ever read the story book version of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs you may be a little disappointed with the adaptation of the movie, or perhaps not.  I would consider the movie to be loosely based on the book, at best, simply because the movie is presenting the idea of raining food as a reality and not as a tall tale a grandfather tells to his dear grandchildren before they hit the sack.  Rather, this movie is about an amateur, yet ambitious, inventor named Flint Lockwood, whose crazy past inventions have earned him the reputation of being a "Weird dude" and a "Shenanigan-izer."  His one goal in life is to create an invention that will help save the townspeople of Swallow Falls of their dull food menu, sardines.  Inevitably Flint and his trusty sidekick Steve, who brings a good portion of comic relief to the table, invent the FLDSMDFR (you'll have to watch the film for that one), which turns water from the sky into food, which leads to meaty-er showers and ice cream flurries.  With a few clicks on Flint's computer, his invention allows for any food of choice to rain from the sky.
     All seems well as Flint is basking in the lime light  of his newly renamed town Chew and Swallow, until his machine takes on a mind of its own, making the food portions much too big and rather scary for the townspeople.  Flint finally realizes that he must rectify his mistake for ignoring the mutating food and save the town by destroying the machine once the love of the town turns sour.  With the help of Sam Sparks, who would later become his love interest, Baby Brent, Mayor Shelbourne, and Manny, whom all add an interesting and very funny dynamic to the film, he is able to save the town and become the true hero he always wanted to be.
     As I said before, this is a pretty clean movie, but if I had to pick out any questionable content there are two things that come to mind.  One being when Flint's sidekick Steve rips the heart out of a Gummy Bear and screams with victory. And the other instance being when we see an extreme close up of Earl the cop flexing his buns of steel--which happens to be hysterical by the way.  Overall, I'd say an appropriate viewing age would be 2 years and up.

Overall Rating: 9.5 out of 10