Cloudy with sheer boredom

Rating: 1/10 (16 January 2010)

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs is not a complete failure. The print I saw was very well made, as was the box it shipped in, I'm sure. As for all other aspects of this stinker, the word FAIL applies unfailingly. I will not reveal any of the exciting story elements, since it would be too much a shock to my system to replay the stream of boredom. In fact, it could harm me in some way.
Where to begin: Meandering, charmless score. HUGE orchestration of what sounds like random cut and paste music from 20 different composers. Whoever 'composed' this 800 pound slug of a score was a bit too enthusiastic in the 'lets honor the film composers of the past!' department.
Thin to non-existent character development. you don't CARE about the characters in this little picture, since you are almost killed by boredom by the wooden dialog. Ghastly demonstration of how to make an audience not care one little bit.
Clever animation techniques marred by amateur-hour art-school reject textures. A look that keeps wandering back and forth between photo-realism and 60's surrealistic animation styles. Jarring inconsistencies and amateur animation style management.
VERY sloppy dialog track so poorly mixed you could hardly detect where the character voices were supposed originate from. Overall, a cheapy-quickie little picture on huge (squandered) budget, mismanaged and mangled into the record books of bad film-making. Shameful. Wasteful.
The story seals the fate of this stinker: I have not read the book, but it must have been more developed than this horror. This film could put a 7 year old on triple sugar rations asleep in 4 minutes. This thing is filled with undeveloped plot devices, paper thin back stories, pretentious 'Father/Son' conflict element that remains lifeless and dull throughout the entire picture. In short: brightly colored pap for 3 year olds. Could have saved a fortune shooting a puppet show at the local carnival.
Poor Sony - nothing, and I mean NOTHING is working anymore. This should be the final tombstone for Sony Animation. Put it down, Mr. Stringer, for it is dead and hanging off the diseased studio like a gangrenous foot. Better to chop the blackened fetid limb that allow it to kill the entire sickly studio.
Avoid this film unless you are studying catastrophe theory, or need to place young ones into a catatonic stupor.