Trailer Trashin’: Get Hungry for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
I hope you all had a good Fourth of July weekend, and avoided The Lone Ranger like the plague. I’m so excited right now, because it’s almost here, dear readers! At long last, the release of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim is only days away. I’ve been looking forward to this film for so long, and I’m both anticipating and dreading how it will be received by both critics and the general public. In the meantime, this week’s new installment of Trailer Trashin’ takes another look at what could be one of the big movies of the fall, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.
Premise: After the disastrous food storm caused by his FLDSMDFR machine, Flint Lockwood (voice of Bill Hader) and his friends are forced to leave the island town of Swallow Falls. Flint accepts an invitation from his idol Chester V (voice of Will Forte) to join the Live Corp Company, which has been tasked to clean up the island, and where the best inventors in the world create technologies for the betterment of mankind and planet Earth. But upon arriving back at Swallow Falls, Flint discovers that his machine is still operational and now creates mutant food beasts like living pickles, hungry tacodiles, shrimpanzees, and apple pie-thons. It is up to Flint and his friends to put a stop to the machine once and for all before this new form of foody life escapes from the island and invades the rest of the planet.
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My take: Unfortunately, I still haven’t gotten around to seeing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009), but I plan to do so as soon as I can. For a long time, I was pretty snobbish when it came to computer-animated films, automatically dismissing anything that wasn’t made by Pixar. But I’ve been slowly moving past that mindset, with my love of last year’s Wreck-It Ralph being a big reason why. Now I try to be much more open-minded about CG cartoons, especially ones that are as well-regarded as the original Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. This is the second trailer for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, and it’s only made me more interested in seeing it.
Compared to the first trailer, this one shows a lot more of the characters. Bill Hader as Flint Lockwood, our inventor hero, is endearingly geeky, and shares that quality of so many movie scientists of being very excited about things that are potentially very bad for themselves and others, which I always get a laugh from. Anna Faris as Samantha Sparks seems spunky and fun, and personally, I think her glasses make her look really cute.
I love that James Caan as Tim Lockwood, Flint’s widowed father, seems more concerned with things like the pickles trying to steal his cigars than he is with the food-animals possibly escaping. Andy Samberg as Brent McHale, Benjamin Bratt as Manny, and Terry Crews as Officer Earl Devereaux all seem quite funny. And I still get a kick of the fact that none other than Neil Patrick Harris is the voice of Steve, Flint’s pet monkey. Probably the biggest compliment I can give this trailer is that, even though I haven’t seen the first film, I like what I’ve seen of these characters, and I want to find out what happens to them.
As I said last time, I think its visual inventiveness is the biggest thing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 has going for it. The environments of the island are really beautiful, and they very much remind me of those sculptures made out of food that you see made for contests and the like. But my favorite aspect of the film’s visuals so far are the “foodimals,” the food-animal hybrids populating the island. Plenty of these tasty-looking beasts make appearances in this trailer, including strawberries, shrimpanzees, pickles, cheespiders, tacodiles, mosquitoasts, flamangos, hippotaomuses, leeks, and watermelophants. Other foodimals not seen here include fruit cockatiels, meatbalruses, buffaloaves, eggplanatees, peanut butter & jellyfish, sasquash, and wildebeets.
I’m also really digging what we’ve seen of the humor so far. I like puns a lot more than I probably should, so I got a big chuckle out of “This will be easy as…” “Pie!” and “There’s a leek in the boat!” I loved the moment of Mr. Lockwood having a tug-of-war with one of the pickles over the cigar box. And I really liked the ending tag of the trailer, with Steve and the shrimpanzee fighting over possession of Steve’s thought translator device. Really the only joke that didn’t work, in my opinion, was the “You scared the jelly out of him” moment, which was just too low brow for my tastes.
A scene from “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.” © 2013 – Columbia Pictures.
But make no mistake, I am very much looking forward to this movie. With an endearing group of characters, creative visuals, and some great humor, this looks like it could be a real winner, both for families and lovers of animated films. And quite frankly, my anticipation for this sequel is just the kick in the pants I need to finally get around the seeing the first film. Come the end of September, you can be pretty sure that I’ll be checking out Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.
ANTICIPATION: Rain or shine, I want to see it.
Release Date: September 27th, 2013
Starring the voices of: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Andy Samberg, Neil Patrick Harris, Benjamin Bratt, Terry Crews, Will Forte, Kristen Schaal, Cody Cameron, and Kris Pearn
Directors: Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn
Writers: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein, and Erica Rivinjoa, based on characters created by Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett
P.S. Everyone, please go see Pacific Rim this weekend. I’m not just saying this as a fan of monster films and Guillermo del Toro, I’m saying this as someone who wants to see new things thrive at the movies. This is pretty much the only big-budget blockbuster this year that is not based on a preexisting property, and it would be a tragedy if it doesn’t succeed. People are always saying that they want to see more original films come out of Hollywood, but they have to put their money where their mouths are and actually see those films when they do come out, because that’s the only way to get movie studios to take notice.
Timothy Monforton
