Score: 2.5/5
*SPOILER ALERT:
CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM THE FIRST FILM*
Recently, I’ve
been a bit unsatisfied with the lack of variety on this blog in terms of what
movies I review. I mainly review new theatrical releases and not much else. Therefore, I have decided to introduce three new types of posts that I will
write sporadically.
The first is “Second
Chance Reviews,” in which I will take a look at films that I wanted to see in
theaters but didn’t get the chance to. For example, I wanted to see “Cloudy with
a Chance of Meatballs 2,” but I simply didn’t have time to check it out when it
was in theaters. Now that it is out on DVD, I will finally be able to see and
review it, making it my first “Second Chance Review.”
“Cloudy with a
Chance of Meatballs 2” attempts to bring back the clever charm that made the
first so memorable. The results are mixed.
As a fan of the
original “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” I had my doubts about a sequel. I
was especially concerned that the original writers (Phil Lord and Chris Miller –
writers of “The Lego Movie” and “21 Jump Street”) did not return to write the
sequel. Though they still helped conceive the story, the writers of the
box-office bomb, “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” took the helm this time
around. The first film had such a tight ending that I honestly could not think
of how they could continue the story. The answer is simple: they didn’t.
The beginning of
this sequel completely contradicts the ending of the first movie, which didn’t
seem in any way to imply a sequel. To demonstrate this, I will provide a brief
summary of the first film.
In the first
movie, a down-on-his-luck inventor named Flint Lockwood (played by Bill Hader)
invents a machine that turns water into food. After it gets launched into the
sky, the machine mixes with the moisture in the atmosphere to turn rain into
food to feed his whole town. However, in a rage of gluttony, the mayor of the
town (played by Bruce Campbell) manipulates Flint into ignore the dangers of
his machine and use it more frequently. Eventually the machine malfunctions and
sends humorously cataclysmic storms of food onto the town. Flint eventually
succeeds in shutting off the machine and is crowned as a hero once he does. In
the credits, it is shown that the town is revived from the disaster and Flint
and his father start a company using a special rubber Flint invented as roof sealant.
However…according to
the sequel, another famous inventor named Chester V shows up after the first
movie and offers to clean up the leftover food that destroyed the town. He then
offers Flint a position at his company “Live Corp.” to which Flint accepts. This
triggers the plot of the second film. This was quite jarring, especially since
the movie starts off by showing clips from the first movie. It’s almost as if
Sony wanted a sequel so badly, that they had to change the ending of the first
movie.
Moreover,
this sequel continues the first movie is with the sudden introduction of a new
character. His name is Chester V (played by Will Forte of “Nebraska”), a Steve
Jobs-esque genius that apparently inspired the main character Flint Lockwood to
invent things.
“Now just hold the phone here,” I immediately thought to myself. In the first movie,
Flint’s mother inspired him to invent to tell him it was okay to be a “nerd,”
before her death later on in his life. Sure, she’s mentioned in this movie as
one of Flint’s inspirations, but with the introduction of Chester V, she is no
longer the main influence for his inventions. That’s right; they actually changed
one of the main character’s backstories for the purpose of introducing a sequel.
I was truly taken aback by this, but I was willing to ignore it if the rest of
the movie was good.
Besides the massive continuity errors from the
first movie, the sequel on its own does have quite a few positive aspects. One
of these aspects is the “foodimals,” a group of food/animal hybrids created
after the events of the first film. They alone made me want to check this movie
out, and the creativity used to put them together is astounding. One “foodimal”
is the apple pie-thon; a snake with apple pie and vanilla ice cream for a head,
a strawberry twizzler for a body and tic-tacs for a rattle. Another is a mosque-toast:
a mosquito with toasted bread for wings, a cinnamon stick for a body and raisins
for eyes. These and more are bound to delight the viewer, and it is a pleasure
to watch them on screen.
The
scenery itself is beautiful, lush and charming as well, with bogs made out of
pancakes and syrup and mountains of rock candy. The art department certainly
deserves all the praise it can get for creating such wonderful visuals. The same
goes for the animation, which is fluent and smooth as can be. It really is one
of the best looking animated films I’ve recently seen. It’s just unfortunate
that the screenplay that the film sets its foundation on is not as astounding.
Don’t
get me wrong, this film does have its moments, and there are some clever jokes
and quirky dialogue scenes that elevated the film for me. One instance is a
character trying to storm off while struggling to walk in maple syrup. The food
puns, a criticism among many reviews, was actually something I didn’t mind and
found kind of cute. The dialogue itself flowed well too, and it could have
thrived with a better story.
Before
I get to the true flaw of the screenplay, the increased use of juvenile humor
compared to the first film is quite irritating. The first film did have toilet
humor, but it was only one or two tiny jokes that barely distracted from how
good it was. This film piles on more gross-out jokes, which is really out of
place in a film about food. Jokes involving a strawberry defecating jam and a
monkey writing with fecal matter really bring the value of the screenplay down.
On the contrary, the toilet humor is nothing compared to the real problem with
this movie: mediocre conflict.
The
first film had fleshed out conflicts like Flint’s relationship with his father
(played by James Caan) and Flint’s ambition to be liked for his ambitions and
inventions. In this film, they decide half-way through to introduce a conflict
of Flint shunning his friends’ advice in favor of Chester V’s. This could have
been a decent conflict if they fleshed it out more, but instead it pops out of
nowhere like the Kool Aid Man bursting through a wall.
What’s worse is
that this turns out to be one of the main conflicts in the movie. It is sort of
implied in the beginning when Flint takes the position at Chester’s company
instead of making a new one with his friends, but his friends encouraged him to
take the position, and it seemed like the reasonable thing to do. It’s not even
mentioned until midway through when Chester suggests that Brent (played by Andy
Samberg) may still be a bully since he was one before Flint became a hero. It
feels like the writers forgot to add a conflict and decided to throw one in at
the last minute.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is not an
awful film. Like I said, it does have its charm and its clever moments. Kids
that loved the first will definitely get a kick out of it. Compared to the
first film, this film’s taste buds aren’t as refined.
Final Grade: C+
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