Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs Review

Is there a purer jumping off point for an adventure fantasy than the latest creation of a loveable oddball inventor? It certainly worked for Back To The Future, Edward Scissorhands and the Wallace & Gromit animations. Some might say it's a lazy way of beginning things, a species of hi-jinks ex machina, but for energetic storytelling of the plunge-straight-in variety, it's hard to beat.

Lively 3D CGI film Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs takes exactly this approach. Within minutes we're introduced to Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader), a nebbish would-be Edison desperate to prove himself, and are treated to a quick survey of some of his eccentric work, which includes the unlovely ratbirds (a cross between rat and bird, naturally), a monkey-thought translator (it turns out monkeys mainly think about Gummi Bears) and a device designed to create food out of water.

It's this latter contraption that provides the meat of the story, quite literally, when accidentally fired into the sky above Flint's small town. Clouds begin to rain hamburgers, and that's only the entree in a long list of foodstuffs Flint manages to order up from back on earth. From being a social reject nagged by his dad (James Cann) and disparaged by the townsfolk, including town cop Earl Devereaux (Mr T doing what Mr T Does best: shouting), the swaggering Mayor (Bruce Campbell) and plump former child celebrity 'Baby' Brent (Andy Samberg), Flint becomes the town's golden son.