Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Check it out...it's a computer-animated movie that is not from Disney-Pixar or Dreamworks Animation!  How novel!  Personally, I love me some Pixar films, but tend to have lukewarm reactions to the more jokey and shallow Dreamworks pictures; I have never seen anything from Sony Pictures Animation, though.  How will it stack up? 

Like the children's book of the same name that the movie is based on, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is set in the island city of Swallow Falls, which is located in under the "A" in "Atlantic Ocean" on maps.  That seems like an awfully flexible location to me, but whatever; the important thing to point out is that this story takes place in a foreign land, but everyone speaks like normal Americans!

"...and finally, we will subvert the youth of America by showing how rad Not-America is, what with all the raining spaghetti and whatnot."

Swallow Falls (which sounds vaguely pornographic) was once the sardine capital of the world, but suffered a huge economic depression when the rest of the world figured out that sardines were "super gross."  For years now, the island has been forced to eat almost nothing but sardines and reminisce about the days when they used to be a special place.  Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) has always wanted to do something special and spectacular through science, but he has, almost without exception, only met with failure when it comes to his inventions.  Flint's newest invention, the FLDSMDFR (Flint Lockwood's Diatomic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator) has the theoretic ability to turn water into whatever food you want.  Unfortunately, it requires a lot of power, more than his home can provide.  What does he do?  Naturally, he tries to connect it to the town's power source.  With his history of disastrous inventions, though, he has to do this on the sly, while everyone in town is attending the grand unveiling of Sardine Land, the mayor's newest attempt to revive the island economy.  Flint manages to hook the FLDSMDFR up, but it absorbs too much energy and goes wild, destroying Sardine Land and rocketing into the stratosphere.  The town is mightily angry at Flint, except for his technophobic father (James Caan), who is just disappointed with his weird kid.  But then, the oddest thing happens...it starts to rain cheeseburgers.  Will this finally make Flint a hero, or is something worse on the horizon?  Should Flint be true to his inventing self, or should he travel the well-worn path?  Will being famous finally win Flint his father's admiration and respect?  It's important to ask these questions, because some kid's movies skimp out on their morals.

Since I'm unfamiliar with Sony Pictures Animation, I'll start by commenting on how the movie looks.  Um, it looks fine.  That was easy.  I like that they went with more cartoony character designs than we've been seeing in most animated movies lately; there's a lot of extremely tall/short and thin/thick combinations going on here, so it's fun seeing a company that is willing to have fun with the designs of its human characters for a change.  Aside from that, this has all the polish that you would expect from a computer animated film that cost about $100 million to make.

Oh, sure.  When it rains cheeseburgers in this movie, they look like the Whoppers from commercials.  If I made it rain burgers, they would look like the crap I get in the drive-thru.

As is the style of the time, Cloudy... boasts an impressive cast of voice actors.  The two stars are Bill Hader and Anna Faris (who plays his love interest and learns that women can be smart, too!  Tee-hee!), and they're certainly likable enough.  James Caan does a good job as Flint's gruff, Oasis-eyebrowed father.

"Cuz after allllll...you're my wunderwaaaaaallll..."

I thought casting Bruce Campbell (who is one of the criminally underused voice talents in the industry) as the mayor of Swallow Falls was a great choice.  He's not a huge character, but Campbell does great work with supporting characters that are full of themselves.  Mr. T had a small role as a local police officer, and --- aside from his typical vocal stylings --- I was surprised at how well he delivered some of the more tender lines in the film.  It was bizarre, though, at how underused some of the celebrity talent was in this movie.  Benjamin Bratt had only a couple lines as a cameraman/doctor/pilot, Neil Patrick Harris was cast as a monkey that talks through a Speak and Spell (brilliant idea) but his lines are dull, and I can barely remember Will Forte's contribution to the movie.  For the record, Andy Samberg still isn't funny, even animated.

So, how does the movie hold up?  I have to admit, the first half is pretty cute.  The pace is quick, the humor is story- and character-based, and it sets up the protagonists to win audiences over.  Who doesn't want the girl who is ashamed of her brains to build up some confidence, or the nerd who always fails to finally do something right?  And if the second half of the film built upon that base, this could have been a great movie.  It doesn't.  Once the food starts raining, things just get random.  I understand that, in this post-Family Guy world, random humor is fairly popular now, but the second half of the movie feels cheap in comparison to the rest.  The gags are mostly visual or based on annoying characters.  The one saving grace the second half contains is a surprisingly touching speech from Flint's dad.  I guess it all boils down to this: do you actually care about these characters as the film ends?  For me, the answer is "no."  While I support the Danica McKellar model for intelligence in pretty girls, I found Anna Faris' character to be kind of weenie-ish, and her transformation to girl-empowered was nothing special.  Flint is flawed, which I like, but either through the writing or Bill Hader's voice acting, his troubles all seemed superficial to me.  None of the supporting cast stuck out enough to salvage this movie as comic relief, which makes the misuse of a talking monkey all the more tragic.

How do you misuse this?!?

If you're wondering if children will enjoy watching this movie, the answer is yes.  Kids will watch almost anything, and this is a movie that aims for the ADD crowd.  It is definitely random, but occasionally funny.  If you're looking for something light and inconsequential, there are worse choices than this effort by co-writers/co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.  I just wasn't impressed.  The characters were shallow or painfully obvious, the film's talent was assigned to seemingly random roles, and the story gives way to repetitious silliness for the last 40 minutes or so.  On the other hand, if you want to see a movie with people eating food off the ground, I can't think of a better choice, because the others are probably fetish videos.

Night at the Museum: The Battle of the Smithsonian

Have you seen Night at the Museum?  In it, Ben Stiller plays a night watchman at a museum that contains the Golden Tablet of Akhmenrah, a magical ancient Egyptian artifact that somehow animates the displays at the museum, making them come to life at night.  That means that the stuffed Teddy Roosevelt, the dinosaur skeleton, the figures in miniature displays, etc.... all those exhibits become animated and come to life.  Are they people or things?  Let's just refer to them as exhibimations.  Hijinks ensued when the exhibimations did blah blah blah and everyone learned a valuable lesson.  And that lesson was, despite being alive only at night, the exhibimations are not, in fact, vampires.  Yet.  Is everybody caught up?  Too bad!

Time for the sequel!  After the events of Night at the Museum, Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) has moved on with his life, quitting his job as night watchman for the American Natural History Museum to become a wealthy and successful inventor/TV pitch man.  Just think of him as the ShamWow guy, minus the arrest record for hooker beating.  After several months of not visiting, Larry stops by the museum as it closes, only to find that it is really closing --- closing for renovations and upgrades; interactive holograms will replace many of the display pieces, with only a precious few staying behind.  Dr. McPhee (Ricky Gervais), the museum director, tells Larry that the old exhibits will be shipped to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, where they will probably sit unseen in their basement archives for years.  And then McPhee leaves Larry in the closed museum, free to walk about on his own.  An interesting choice, I suppose.  Larry plays catch up with his old museum buddies, but is told confidentially by Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams) that, unbeknownst to most of the exhibimations, the Golden Tablet of Akhmenrah will be staying in the Natural History Museum, along with Teddy and Akhmenrah; tragically, this will be the final night the Smithsonian-bound exhibimations will enjoy their unnatural nocturnal lives!  You can never trust exhibimations, though.  Larry's nemesis from the first film, the monkey Dexter, stole the Tablet and it was packed away with the stuff going to the Smithsonian.  The Tablet was fun in the relatively small Natural History Museum, but the Smithsonian is the world's largest museum.  Chaos and even more hijinks are assured!

You would think that hijinks would be enough for the movie (it was for the first one, after all), but sequels like to turn everything up a few notches.  Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian gives Larry a villain to defeat: the kindly Akhmenrah's brother, Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria).  More warlike than his brother, Kahmunrah wants to use the Golden Tablet to open the Gate to the Underworld, where he will get an army that will conquer the world.  At least, during nighttime hours.  Will Larry defeat the evil voice actor, or will the third movie in the franchise be titled Night at the Museum: Surrender at Appomattox? 

Oftentimes, the success of a sequel depends on how much of its original cast returned.  In this way, Battle of the Smithsonian definitely succeeded.  Returning cast members include Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais, Mizuo Peck, and Brad Garrett (as a voice).  At the Smithsonian, we meet a whole new cast of characters, including Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams), George Custer (Bill Hader), and Ivan the Terrible (Chrisopher Guest), along with Kahmunrah and a cast of dozens more.  Other noteworthy actors that pop up in bit parts include Jonah Hill, Eugene Levy (as a voice), the Jonas Brothers (as voices), Ed Helms, George Foreman, Craig Robinson, Clint Howard, Jay Baruchel, Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant.


The first Museum felt pretty busy, despite a cast that featured a lot of animals and cavemen; this one feels like it has ADD.  There are way too many recognizable actors playing way too many roles that get decent screen time, so none of the new characters (with the possible exception of Ameila Earhart) get developed at all.  Even Larry's motivation is hard to figure out this time around. Last time, Larry was trying to prove that he was not a loser to his son and ex-wife.  This time, his successful business makes him too busy for his son or a girlfriend.  He runs to the Smithsonian because the exhibimations are suddenly important to him again and because he knows the havoc they will wreak.  That's fine, but it doesn't have the emotional core that most family films strive for.

The acting in the movie was fine, if fairly basic.  Almost all of the characters were caricatures, so they're basically just a visual gag and maybe a few lines.  I'm not a Ben Stiller fan, but I didn't mind him in the first Museum; here, though, he comes across as cocky and not nearly as likable.   I don't understand why Hank Azaria can be cast in any ethnic role, but even if I was okay with him playing an Egyptian pharoh, I still wouldn't understand his lisp.  Really?  A lisp?  For that to work, you really have to put some effort in, like the forty or fifty jokes Monty Python did in Life of Brian.  This was just lazy.  Amy Adams is pretty, but her zany 1920s accent drove me nuts; if she didn't mention speakeasies, the jitterbug, dancing on a pole, or Calvin Coolidge, it's only because the lines got cut.  Adams is a likable actress, and her character was kind of appealing, but her voice was obnoxious.

Director Shawn Levy is not a terribly talented comedic director.  He does mostly family comedies, filled with lots of characters.  I get why he directed this, and he probably did a decent job with the script he was given.  The script was disappointing, though.  Written by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant (of Reno: 911! fame), this film was just sight gag after sight gag.  These two are not the most consistent of screenwriters (see Herbie: Fully Loaded.  Or don't.), but they have definitely done better work.  This attempt comes across as shallow and simple, without the warmth that made adults forgive their children for making them sit through it.  Visually, this is a pretty good movie.  There are even several almost funny jokes.  Given the talent in this movie, though, it was a big disappointment, even for a family movie.