Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Tasty!

‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ was a popular children’s book in the 1970’s. It has been adapted to the big screen in this animation feature.

Swallow Falls, a small island in the Atlantic has only one thing to boast of: Sardines. With time, exports die out, people get bored of eating sardines all day long and despair settles on the town.

Enter Flint Lockwood, a regular nerd with big dreams in his eyes, who has been trying to invent something useful since his childhood. He finally succeeds, inventing a machine that starts raining food from the sky. What happens afterwards forms the crux of the story.
The screenplay continues on the innovative theme in the story and bombards us with delectable food items falling from the sky, until greed settles in. How Flint resolves the situation that arises from this is handled pretty funnily.

The visuals of ‘Cloudy...’ are different, unlike what we normally see in a Pixar movie. The food looks delicious, but that’s just about it. The cast, led by Bill Hader and Anna Faris, does a good job. James Caan as Flint’s father, and Bruce Campbell as the mayor are excellent.

Final Verdict: ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ is a simple movie, uncomplicated by the regular ‘deeper meaning of life’ fundas of Pixar. Good for a home viewing. 3 out of  5.

A visual feast: 9

Shane Acker plunges into a full-length remake of his 2005 award winning short of the same name. An apocalyptic world is something Hollywood evidently loves, what with the recent release of 2012 and countless other apocalyptic adventures.



The Plot: ‘9’ is set in a post-apocalyptic world where all humans are extinct. We meet ‘9’, a rag doll with life, given sentience by the humans. The purpose of this gift is unknown to us. The world around ‘9’ is barren, lonely and scary. Corpses and debris fill the landscape, and there’s an enemy around. The last of the machines is still activated, on a vicious mission to destroy any life forms.

From the very outset, it is clear that this is not a feel-good animation movie for kids. It’s dark and scary. At times, the story does feel predictable, but the innovative setting and slick action more than makes up for it. The roots of ‘9’ lie closer to ‘Terminator Salvation’ than ‘Wall-E’. What makes ‘9’ different from other post-apocalyptic flicks is its strange set of characters/creatures. The last time a doll was the main character in a movie, Chucky was tearing up unsuspecting kids with a knife.

The Visuals: Brilliant. The imagery on show is the best aspect of ‘9’. It wouldn’t have counted for too much in any other film; but as it is an animation flick, you have to give it the plaudits it deserves. The landscape, the machines, the dolls; everything is extremely well-eked out.

The Cast: It’s hard to go wrong with actors like Christopher Plummer, Elijah Wood, Martin Landau and John C. Reilly. The voice acting is indeed very good, especially by Plummer in the patriarchal role of ‘1’. He brings an air of self-assumed grandeur to the character that you feel like shaking him by the scruff and making him listen to 9. Full credit must go to the cast for making the dolls believable.

The Verdict: 9 is visually stunning, and has a good story to boot. Watch it on the big screen if you can, but do watch it. 3.5 out of 5.