Cloudy with a Chance of Bizarre
Spaghetti with No Chance of Meatballs!
Since it was a school holiday thanks to Yom Kippur, I took the girls to see the movie “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.” I’ve always loved the magical, mysterious, QUIET book that the movie was based upon. I can now report that the movie bore little resemblance to the book, except for the food falling from the sky. Someone took the original book, gave it a sugar high, infected it with a case of ADHD, and set it loose in the theater. When you walk out of the theater, you may feel as though you are having a sugar crash as I did.
This was truly one of the more bizarre movies I’ve seen in a very long time. The last kids’ movie I saw that was this weird was “Barnyard” where the lead male cow walked around with a huge set of udders. The last adult movie that this reminded me of was “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” which some of you may not remember since it was a very long time ago. In one especially freaky scene from that movie, the cooked chicken on the dinner plate gets up and dances. In “Cloudy”, the hero, if you can call him that, enters the monstrous food cloud he created and meets giant Thanksgiving turkeys that come alive and begin to attack. I told you, weird.
The girls liked the movie and I have to agree it became funnier as it progressed. When all food breaks loose at the end, the art was similar to the book, even while being more colorful, frenetic and bizarre.
Were there lessons to be learned here? I suppose there are if you’re the kind of person that likes to walk out of movie feeling enlightened. The town of Swallow Falls gives you more than enough to chew and swallow. Let’s see, there’s the time honored lesson of “be careful what you wish for” since Swallow Falls goes from subsisting on sardines, to being clobbered by steaks and meatballs, and swept up in a spaghetti tornado. There’s also the lesson for parents to pay more attention to your children so they don’t go to extremes for your attention. Let’s not forget the old familiar lesson of “listening to your inner voice” which the hero would have done well to heed. Or, finally, eating extremes are never good. Living on one type of food, such as sardines isn’t good, but neither is looking for so much variety and quantity you become so fat, sick, and overwhelmed you need to escape your world.
But really, this movie wasn’t made for the lessons, they were just the icing on the cake. It’s all about the bizarre situations, outlandish animation, and silly laughs.
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I saw the movie and enjoyed it as much as I might have enjoyed the food but as weird movies go I would vote for Pinocchio. You know a wooden puppet with an insect conscience,his probocis growing with every prevarication, begins to turn into a donkey and gets swallowed by a whale. Thats more weird that Alice in Wonderland.