MANNA FROM HEAVEN

Let it come down…

One of the reasons for starting me-ac was for it to be a sort of impromptu diary of those cultural events one attends or absorbs, but often fails to record. There are obvious reasons for this – the most startling being a lack of any real time to process or even fully immerse in the distractions that make the daily grind palatable. We hear it, watch it, read it, maybe even eat or drink it, but we rarely savour the essence of what we so avidly consume, we’re so busy needlessly chasing our tails or racking up second-hand opinions as our own. Now I’m no exception to these rules by a long chalk – peering into the cavernous abyss of my finances (or their startling absence) is frankly terrifying, and getting worse by the nanosecond – but I’m choosing, temporarily, to delay my descent onto skid row by allowing myself to wallow, even luxuriate, in ignoring those age-old time-is-money dictates.

And, since me-ac cranked into inauspicious being, nothing has brought more simple joy or so swiftly sped through 90 minutes than an early afternoon, deliriously childfree, screening of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.  

Adapted by authors Ron and Judi Barrett from their well-received book of the same name, Cloudy… kicks off at a relentless pace and barely steps off the gas for its duration. It centres around Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader), a young inventor on the small sardine-tinning island of Swallow Falls. While different from his peers he’s also desperate for their approval, pouring all his energies into his lab work, with varying degrees of success – from self-spraying shoes, to rat birds and his malfunctioning Monkey Thought Translator. And despite his despair at his earlier failures, and his father’s seeming indifference to them, Flint pursues his increasingly ambitious dreams thanks to his mother’s tireless encouragement.

Almost before the viewer has had time to process the news, we learn with a jolt that Flint’s adored mother passed away sometime in his early teens. And with adulthood looming, Flint is under increasing pressure to abandon his inventions for a role in the family tackle shop; though father Tim (James Caan) and son have clear communication problems, the thickset mono-browed dad only able to converse in oblique fishing metaphors (with very acute, if accidental, similarities to Eric Cantona’s infamous “When the seagulls follow the trawler…” press conference).

Flint’s last gasp attempt to stave off living a humdrum life in Nowheresville is his invention of the Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator – a machine that, quasi-Biblically, transmutes water into food. And it’s while plugging into his community’s central power supply that he comes into contact with the film’s other central characters – the avaricious Mayor Shelbourne (Bruce Campbell), cop Earl Devereaux (Mr T), former child star and town bully Baby Brent (Andy Samberg), glamorous weathergirl/love interest Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) – as a controlled rainfall of cheeseburgers delight and entrance the previously fish-fed locals. 

The unhinged, capacious Shelbourne seizes this chance at making a real name for himself, his blandishments and the previously obscure charms of local celebrity persuading Flint to sing to his tune, only for his weather demands to get increasingly anarchic, super-sized and out of control. Already palpably strong, the animation really comes into its own here, with sustained hails of giant foodstuffs descending onto Swallow Falls with increasingly catastrophic consequences.

Add some terrific dialogue – “That spaghetti twister is just an amuse bouche compared to what’s on the way!” – to a taut, killer script and some surrealist touches (like the knowing nod to Eraserhead, and more explicit allusions to the entire disaster movie genre) and it’s clear directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller are having as much fun with their source material as the viewers are with the fruits of their toils.

And while I rank Toy Story 2 up there with the best of Hitchcock in terms of nerve-jangling suspense, I also spit on those insipid twits who somehow equate certain children’s movies with high art statements worthy of Tolkien. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs has no such lofty pretensions. It may be a prescient parable about the perils of over-consumption, but it’s also an easily digestible, self-contained treat. Time well wasted, whatever any errant clock-watcher protests.