Call it "Cloudy Animated Feature With a Chance of Anorexia."
There's a standard rule in comedy that a good joke can be used three times, but no more. The repetition of the joke actually heightens the comic effect, but you can have too much of a good thing, hence the rule of three.
In "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2," the repeated joke involves the use of the word "leak," as in "there's a leak in this boat," followed by a cutaway shot to a shrieking, personified vegetable whose species shares that word for a name. And yes, people, this is the film's best joke, which is saying something... something that I'll get into soon enough.
By the second appearance of this screaming member of the Allium genus, I was able to let down my guard - my lifelong confusion over the difference between a leek and a scallion notwithstanding - and experience a rare laugh. And I'm sure by now that you're wondering if the third use of the joke was even more satisfyingly comedic. Sadly, however, I can't remember enough to tell you about it, as by this point I had experienced a near-full mental blackout, a last-ditch attempt at self-preservation, surrounded as I was by candy-munching toddlers hanging on the every word of their favorite foods come to life. I exaggerate little when I say that my viewing strategy most closely mimicked a computer rebooting into safe mode. That's how close I was to losing brain cells.
The original film, 2009's "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," was itself based on an imaginative and charming children's picture book dating all the way back to 1978. The conflict of the book, as extrapolated upon by the original film with rail-jumping embellishment, is that a young inventor sees the good in inventing a machine that can produce food. The production of the food, however, is tied to weather systems, thus making the good he sees in his god-playing insanity on par with that of another famous scientist by the name of Victor Frankenstein. Eventually, giant mutant foods rain down from the heavens, placing into peril the citizens of Swallow Falls. (Hey, all kids films have built-in jokes for adults...is that a porn name?) I'll say it again, kids...there might just be such a thing as too much of a good thing.
The Frankenstein reference is actually a good point of contact for beginning to grapple with the many levels of psychological dysfunction concocted as this sequel, for "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2" is a cross between the aforementioned Mary Shelley story, the Christian animated series Veggie Tales (if those much less creepy animated edibles had been binge-watching "Breaking Bad"), and that animated conga line of concessions snacks that used to play prior to the previews at drive-in movies 30 years ago.
Back for more is young Flint Lockwood, unrecognizably voiced by new "Saturday Night Live" alum, Bill Hader. Lockwood, whose 1940s Hollywood star-sounding name betrays his geeky existence, learns that his food machine has not been completely destroyed as he had once assumed. I would print the name of the machine here, but I'm not going to waste my time. Suffice it to say that it involves a vowel-free acronym, the pronunciation of which generates a joke in the film that most definitely violates the rule of three mentioned at the beginning of this review. If I let my dog type this next paragraph, whatever she would type would be exactly the name of this machine.
Enter into the picture the nefarious Chester V (voiced by fellow SNL alum Will Forte in the film's easiest to detect vocal performance). Chester V is in search of Lockwood's machine. He's also in search of a full last name and a more fully formed lower torso, but maybe that will be explored in part three. Chester V, with his prominent, V-shaped, white goatee and serpentine movements that most closely resemble a twerking earthworm, works as an inventor with a company called the LIVE Corp Company. (How clever are you, people? Did you not just see "Elysium"?) Chester has also been Flint's role model since boyhood, and uses this fact to exploit Flint in an attempt to gain control of Flint's still-in-existence machine, so he can use it to sorry-this-is-where-I-blacked-out-and-I-don't-know-what-he-wanted-it-for.
As Flint is manipulated by Chester, members of his inner-circle begin to bemoan the fact that "he's changed." This includes former bully-turned-lobotomized-poster-boy-for-obesity Brent McHale (Andy Samberg), almost love interest and weather girl (but not the cool kind that sings of raining men) Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) and town law enforcement and stereotypical token black character, Earl Devereaux (Terry Crews, replacing the original film's Mr. T. Yes...even Mr. T, who must surely be hard up for work, passed on this script.) There is also Flint's pet monkey Steve, inexplicably credited to Neil Patrick Harris, who gets his own subplot in a conflict established with rival primate, Chester V's own sidekick, Barb (voiced by Kristen Schaal, though I swore it was Sarah Silverman). Barb is an ape, apparently, though the film's animation department took a dump when it comes to creating something that even remotely resembles such an animal...surprising, considering how convincingly they turn two tacos into a crocodile.
I still haven't mentioned the central twist in the sequel's conflict, the new premise that all of the mutant food blanketing Swallow Falls (heh heh...) has now somehow come to life and has developed emotions and human characteristics, including the most disturbing revelation of all in light of Flint's mission to finally destroy his machine, which is the understanding that the foods are members of loving family units. And so, a menacing, aircraft carrier-sized cheeseburger with french fry legs is merely seeking to protect its young and get its belly rubbed, and a family of marshmallows frolic like limbless albino meerkats. What's a compassionate guy to do?
Before long, Flint's father goes on a fishing expedition with a gang of dill pickles in a scene reminiscent of the one in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" where McMurphy hijacks a school bus and takes his fellow psych ward inmates on a life adventure. Okay, there's not really that much of a resemblance. I'm trying here. And is it just me or was it ironic that the pickles were fishing for a food source that actually already has eyes and a mouth?
Perhaps in the biggest they-must-have-been-on-drugs-when-they-made-this moment of all, Flint and his crew encounter a pumpkin-sized strawberry with large, blinking eyes and a Furbee's coo. I am certain that kids all over America today are begging their parents to buy them a giant freaking plush strawberry, though I did not find the thing as cute as everyone else. In fact, I studied the thing with tense caution, certain that, like a fruity Mogwai, the berry would make contact with water, reveal its razor-sharp teeth and destroy everyone in a Jamba Juice-sponsored deus ex machina. The film had me that on edge...I was anticipating a berry Gizmo.
It's possible that you're wondering why an animated children's film would leave me so disillusioned and disturbed, but I can answer that simply, as I made numerous attempts to rationally debate with my fellow adults in attendance just what, pray tell, a guy's got to eat in this world. Worse still, what options will us parents have for our kids, now that they will surely visualize their produce as having feelings. I'd argue that "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2" is a thinly-veiled propaganda piece on behalf of PETA and vegetarianism, were it not for the fact that the preponderance of cuddly and crazy foodstuffs in the film skews vegan. In an act of reverse psychology, shouldn't we befriend the meat?
So if the film doesn't espouse vegetarianism, then what? Anorexia? That's the best I can muster. Don't eat ANYTHING. It has feelings...and family. You sick, uncaring bastard with your basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
For the record, the kids I witnessed, including my own, were delighted by "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2." And I will admit that I walked in to the theatre braced and ready to be robbed blind of 95 minutes of my life, jokingly referring to the film as "Cloudy With No Chance of This Being a Good Movie" before the first "pear-ot" (get it?!) took flight. In the end, the kids got what they wanted, as evidenced by the film's $35 million-at-the-box-office opening weekend, and I got what I expected, which is, um, not much, unless you include an experience that I can only begin to describe as a bad drug trip without the drugs. Not that I know anything about drugs. I don't take them, because I'm sure they have feelings. And parents. Maybe this film's makers picked the wrong ingestible items to venerate.
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