Like a less pretentious WALL-E

Rating: Null/10 (5 October 2010)

"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" is a fun, fast and funny animated comedy which revolves around a young scientist who invents a machine which causes food to rain from the skies. Like Pixar's "Wall-E", the film points fingers at Western over-consumption, greed and consumer capitalism, and the effect this lifestyle of decadence has on the environment.
Unlike "Wall-E", however, the film is not preachy, its metaphors disguised with wild antics and much mayhem. Consider one scene in which a fat Mayor sails on a giant slice of toast, and then begins to eat the toast until his "boat" sinks. It's a metaphor for man irrationally consuming his way to disaster, but it's played for laughs and lasts no more than a couple seconds. The film is filled with such "visual messages", but never feels didactic.
This being an animated film, "Meatballs" utilises a virtual camera which possesses a sense of freedom and energy which conventional films lack. For this reason, these films are always worth keeping up with.
In terms of flaws, like most of these animated films, the picture is far too busy, never letting any scene or character breathe. Still, the mayhem is in service of something worthwhile. In marrying a tale of "being yourself" with "mega consumption", this flick, perhaps unintentionally, taps into French philosopher Bernard Stiegler's writings, in which he argues - take a deep breath - that "the techniques used to create consumer behaviour amount to the destruction of psychic and collective individuation, and that the diversion of libidinal energy toward the consumption of consumer products results in an addictive cycle, leading to hyper-consumption, the exhaustion of desire, and the reign of symbolic misery". Despite its air of outward juvenility, that's the message this whacky film is trying to convey.
Incidentally, "Meatballs" was made by Sony Pictures Animation, late comers into the world of CGI features. Pixar led the way and then came DreamWorks, now Sony is hoping to cash in on this billion dollar global market by using the formulae of both studios. They've only made three films thus far, "Surf's Up" and "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" being the best two.
7.9/10 â€“ Environmentalism is in vogue. But is it a coincidence that the Chinese character for "crisis" is a combination of the characters for "danger" and "opportunity"?
Worth one viewing.