Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs the MOVIE

I just got back from taking my daughter to see Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, and I was pleasantly surprised. I had seen a few previews for the movie but had little knowledge of the story otherwise. I had no prior knowledge of the existence of a story before seeing the movie.

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, for those who like me had not read or even realized there was a book before there was a movie, is a story about an inventor who is trying to live up to his idols (Einstein, Edison, Tesla etc) as well as earn his father's love. Throughout the movie we are also introduced to the townspeople from the town where the inventor, Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) and we learn the difficulties they often endure because of Flint's inventions.

Flint Lockwood has dreamed of becoming a leading inventor since childhood. While he has successfully invented many things, spray on shoes, instant hair growth serum and mixed the dna of rodents and birds, his inventions are often of dubious results. The shoes cannot be removed, the instant hair growth serum is uncontrollable and having birdrats just is not as much fun as some might think. Flint's constant inventing leads his fellow townspeople to much frustration, especially his father Tim Lockwood (James Caan) and the town police officer Earl Devereaux (the nearly show stealing Mr T). Flint lives in a town that was once well known for sardine fishing, but one day people realized that sardines are gross and the town's economy collapsed over night. The townspeople were left to eat their harvest of sardines in grey squalor. As luck would have it, Flint is trying out his latest invention (a machine that converts water to food) on the same day that Mayor Shelbourne (Bruce Campbell) is debuting to the towns people his idea for economic recovery, a sardine themed amusement park. The Mayor has even gotten "National" news coverage because his brother is an anchor at the Weather News Network, who has sent a "reporter", really coffee girl Sam Sparks (Voiced by Anna Faris) a closet weather nerd who is super excited to be sent on assignment. She gets a big break when the story takes its turn and Flint's machine malfunctions after being hooked directly to the power grid. His machine flies into the sky and continues to work, giving us our title Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

This was a really good movie, probably one of the best family oriented movies of the year giving Monsters vs Aliens a run for its money. Plenty of slapstick humor for the little kids, jokes for the bigger kids and scenes that will make the grownups laugh. There are also plenty of slightly serious scenes but humor abounds. In my opinion while he has a relatively small amount of screen time, Mr T's character of Earl Devereaux is the tops of the show, easily being the best part.

Highly recommended.