Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 食破天驚

The film begins with a young Flint Lockwood (voice of Bill Hader), inventor since a young age, asking, “What is the number one problem facing our community today? Untied shoelaces,” he proclaims while demonstrating his new invention, spray-on shoes. But like all of his other inventions they have flaws, and these don't come off.

The narrative follows a familiar route — the boy wants to achieve his father's approval, after his mother passes away. His father, voiced by James Caan, wishes he would quit his silly inventing, but Flint cannot quit. “I wanted to run away that day, but you can't run away from your own feet,” he says.

Flint's dream is to help his town, called Swallow Falls. Famous for its sardines and now fallen on hard times, after everyone in the world realized that sardines are super gross. He decides to create a new invention, the mouthwatering prospect of turning water into food.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller co-direct this 3-D animated movie, after their prior collaboration, “Clone High,” another animation. The pair brings a uniquely refreshing story to the big screen using three dimensional effects to emphasize the sky-falling visuals. They cleverly adapted the novel, which was void of any characters other than the narrator, and managed to maintain many of the books' main images, such as the pancake flattening the school.

For once Flint's invention actually works, and this unforeseen success elevates him from chaos inducing inventor to celebrity overnight, and the town soon begins to put in their food requests. The mayor of Swallow Falls, (Bruce Campbell) renames the town to “Chew and Swallow” and turns the decrepit fishing village into a thriving tourist hotspot. A media intern and wannabe weather girl, Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) suddenly finds herself in the middle of the most sensational weather story ever.

Full of jaw-dropping, eye popping scenes, the film's opening premise is both hilarious and yet intriguing, and the character animated movements are similar to puppets and the large eyes and elastic faces make for hilarious viewing.

As soon as the food appears, the color of the film ignites as well, similar in style to “Up” and the colossal feeding frenzy really wets the appetite. The characters are genuinely interesting — especially Mr. T voicing the attentive cop.

Overall the jokes and the surreal torrent of food, keep the viewer entertained right up to the end, although the initial sequences are funniest and some of the humor is a little repetitive.

One problem is the intelligent weather girl, who was obviously intrigued and not at all dumb, like she pretended to be, and it seemed a little pointless to the plot. The comedy overall was top rate while the drama seems a little overbearing, but this film has huge appeal.

It's a feast for all, there's something in it for all the family, it has laugh out loud comedy, a few more grown-up subjects, more food than you could wave a stick at and a delightful cast of voice actors. The visuals are mesmerizing, really beautiful and easy on the eyes, unlike some 3-D films. Chances are you will eat it up.

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