Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2
This is an environmental film that also talks about the moral difficulties with factory farming. This is an outrageously stylized parody of the Jurassic Park sequels that depends upon the assumption that you saw the first one. Overall, it holds its own well, and this was a good film... though I won't deny it had its stupid moments.
The first thing I want to say about this movie is just how stylized it is. This movie demonstrates the great thing about animation, you don't have to copy reality if you don't want too. The reason that so many people like Up or Ratatouille is because the characters look like they were drawn before they were turned into 3-D models for the movie. Cloudy 2 is no exception, in fact everything looks like it's been through this treatment. This is the best way to avoid the Uncanny Valley: make it look recognizable, but not too recognizable.
The fluidity of character movement is very interesting to watch. There was a very interesting fluidity of motion that you wouldn't get from a normal human skeleton (especially with the antagonist). That was looking back on the days of cell animation, and I loved it in both movies.
So, that was the biggest positive of Cloudy 2 at least in my opinion, so now I have a couple of negatives.
The first negative is the comedy of the script. Most of the gags that weren't visual were based on one of 2 things: spontaneous reaction or food jokes. If they attempted a literary gag that wasn't one of these two things, it may have been funny, but it didn't make much sense and the momentum of the scene stopped for a second.
The specific example here is the part where the police officer says "It's enough to make a grown man cry... but not this man, get back in there tear!" and then the tear goes back into his eye. While that may have been funny on a fundamental level, there isn't a particular need for a joke in this scene. There are points in comedies where there shouldn't be a joke and this script didn't understand that this was a relatively serious moment in the context of the film.
Any way, the problem with the humor in this film is that it basically thrives on 2 jokes: everything is a food, and the characters say things faster than they realistically should. Those are fine, but they get really boring after a while, at least from the perspective of an older audience member. A kid might think differently, but I have the mind of a 30 year old so I can't say for sure.
In the grand scheme of things, this was a smaller problem with the movie than I'm making it out to be. Granted the film should have been at least a half hour longer (and that's why the dialogue seems rushed), but the comedy was very well done.
Spoiler section:
The big problem with the film lies in one particular character:
Chester V, the antagonist.
Let's talk about Chester's plan: Chester goes to the island to recover the FLDSMDFR, but he can't because: A) he can't find it, and B) the machine is making living food that keeps attacking the people trying to find it. At this point he sends Flint Lockwood to find it, and then goes to help Flint find it upon hearing that Flint has a group going with him and that group can leak his idea yet to be exposited. He goes out of his way to get Flint's friends away from Flint, assuming they will die on the island.
Here we come to the first problem, why did he send Flint's friends away? If they didn't die on the island they'd do exactly what you're trying to prevent them from doing. Granted, they do get captured, but why do you still need Flint's help at that point? He made a thing that takes you to the FLDSMDFR, why do you still need him around? Bag that guy! It'd save you a lot of trouble later!
So, Flint and the gang (minus Sam and those guys) go to the mountain and Flint jumps over to the FLDSMDFR to put the USB in. The USB that re-programs the machine to do exactly what it was doing before with a different display on the screen! *gasp*
Why did you reprogram the FLDSMDFR? Your plan would have worked without you reprogramming it. In fact, why didn't you reprogram it to go back to making big food instead of foodimals? That'd get rid of the moral difficulties behind it, why didn't you do that?
So Flint goes to Chester's Lab with an overly complicated giant fishing rod... OK. So he goes to Chester's Lab to discover his friends are falling into a giant meat grinder and the only way to stop it will be to find Chester among his holograms which he does by having a monkey shoot paint and confetti everywhere so that he can push Chester's button and turn the machine off and Chester runs away, meanwhile all the foodimals have broken free and Chester gets eaten by a Cheese-spider concluding his story.
...Problem 1:
Why is there a gigantic meat grinder? Does Chester need a gigantic meat grinder? I thought all the meat foodimals were already ground.
Problem 2:
If Chester was going to kill Flint's friends if he didn't conform, why did Chester have the stop button so easily accessible! That entire part of the climax could have been avoided if Chester and Flint's friends were in a different room than Flint.
Problem 3:
How does Chester know that that the Mr. T police guy can't break police tape?
Problem 4:
Where are the holograms being projected from! We never see a hologram projector anywhere and yet they're all over the place and apparently disappear upon contact.
Problem 5:
This all could have been avoided if you made the machine make normal food.
I have nothing against Chester as a character, but the moral high ground this movie tries to take makes no sense! This is obviously showing that we shouldn't kill animals in mass amounts for product, something I heartily agree with, but this message is broken by the fact that Chester is going to grind up plants with nerve endings rather than animals. Plant's with nerve endings are still plants. Making food out of plants generally isn't frowned upon, making this films message fall somewhat flat.
We shouldn't eat animals, great! But if you make food out of more food, what's the problem?
And here's the other thing, the science of this ecosystem is never sufficiently explained. Are there Decomposers? Are there predatory foods? Are there Primary Consumers? This ecosystem seems to be 100% manufactured by the FLDSMDFR, which raises so many questions about how this ecosystem works!
I don't mind it... but... meh!
Overall, it was a good movie. It depends on if you saw the first one, but it was good. Granted there were parts were kinda' stupid, but there always are. So, go ahead and see it, I liked it as much as the next guy, despite its flaws.
6/10
The first thing I want to say about this movie is just how stylized it is. This movie demonstrates the great thing about animation, you don't have to copy reality if you don't want too. The reason that so many people like Up or Ratatouille is because the characters look like they were drawn before they were turned into 3-D models for the movie. Cloudy 2 is no exception, in fact everything looks like it's been through this treatment. This is the best way to avoid the Uncanny Valley: make it look recognizable, but not too recognizable.
The fluidity of character movement is very interesting to watch. There was a very interesting fluidity of motion that you wouldn't get from a normal human skeleton (especially with the antagonist). That was looking back on the days of cell animation, and I loved it in both movies.
So, that was the biggest positive of Cloudy 2 at least in my opinion, so now I have a couple of negatives.
The first negative is the comedy of the script. Most of the gags that weren't visual were based on one of 2 things: spontaneous reaction or food jokes. If they attempted a literary gag that wasn't one of these two things, it may have been funny, but it didn't make much sense and the momentum of the scene stopped for a second.
The specific example here is the part where the police officer says "It's enough to make a grown man cry... but not this man, get back in there tear!" and then the tear goes back into his eye. While that may have been funny on a fundamental level, there isn't a particular need for a joke in this scene. There are points in comedies where there shouldn't be a joke and this script didn't understand that this was a relatively serious moment in the context of the film.
Any way, the problem with the humor in this film is that it basically thrives on 2 jokes: everything is a food, and the characters say things faster than they realistically should. Those are fine, but they get really boring after a while, at least from the perspective of an older audience member. A kid might think differently, but I have the mind of a 30 year old so I can't say for sure.
In the grand scheme of things, this was a smaller problem with the movie than I'm making it out to be. Granted the film should have been at least a half hour longer (and that's why the dialogue seems rushed), but the comedy was very well done.
Spoiler section:
The big problem with the film lies in one particular character:
Chester V, the antagonist.
Let's talk about Chester's plan: Chester goes to the island to recover the FLDSMDFR, but he can't because: A) he can't find it, and B) the machine is making living food that keeps attacking the people trying to find it. At this point he sends Flint Lockwood to find it, and then goes to help Flint find it upon hearing that Flint has a group going with him and that group can leak his idea yet to be exposited. He goes out of his way to get Flint's friends away from Flint, assuming they will die on the island.
Here we come to the first problem, why did he send Flint's friends away? If they didn't die on the island they'd do exactly what you're trying to prevent them from doing. Granted, they do get captured, but why do you still need Flint's help at that point? He made a thing that takes you to the FLDSMDFR, why do you still need him around? Bag that guy! It'd save you a lot of trouble later!
So, Flint and the gang (minus Sam and those guys) go to the mountain and Flint jumps over to the FLDSMDFR to put the USB in. The USB that re-programs the machine to do exactly what it was doing before with a different display on the screen! *gasp*
Why did you reprogram the FLDSMDFR? Your plan would have worked without you reprogramming it. In fact, why didn't you reprogram it to go back to making big food instead of foodimals? That'd get rid of the moral difficulties behind it, why didn't you do that?
So Flint goes to Chester's Lab with an overly complicated giant fishing rod... OK. So he goes to Chester's Lab to discover his friends are falling into a giant meat grinder and the only way to stop it will be to find Chester among his holograms which he does by having a monkey shoot paint and confetti everywhere so that he can push Chester's button and turn the machine off and Chester runs away, meanwhile all the foodimals have broken free and Chester gets eaten by a Cheese-spider concluding his story.
...Problem 1:
Why is there a gigantic meat grinder? Does Chester need a gigantic meat grinder? I thought all the meat foodimals were already ground.
Problem 2:
If Chester was going to kill Flint's friends if he didn't conform, why did Chester have the stop button so easily accessible! That entire part of the climax could have been avoided if Chester and Flint's friends were in a different room than Flint.
Problem 3:
How does Chester know that that the Mr. T police guy can't break police tape?
Problem 4:
Where are the holograms being projected from! We never see a hologram projector anywhere and yet they're all over the place and apparently disappear upon contact.
Problem 5:
This all could have been avoided if you made the machine make normal food.
I have nothing against Chester as a character, but the moral high ground this movie tries to take makes no sense! This is obviously showing that we shouldn't kill animals in mass amounts for product, something I heartily agree with, but this message is broken by the fact that Chester is going to grind up plants with nerve endings rather than animals. Plant's with nerve endings are still plants. Making food out of plants generally isn't frowned upon, making this films message fall somewhat flat.
We shouldn't eat animals, great! But if you make food out of more food, what's the problem?
And here's the other thing, the science of this ecosystem is never sufficiently explained. Are there Decomposers? Are there predatory foods? Are there Primary Consumers? This ecosystem seems to be 100% manufactured by the FLDSMDFR, which raises so many questions about how this ecosystem works!
I don't mind it... but... meh!
Overall, it was a good movie. It depends on if you saw the first one, but it was good. Granted there were parts were kinda' stupid, but there always are. So, go ahead and see it, I liked it as much as the next guy, despite its flaws.
6/10