October 25, 2013
The plot, which has a mild echo of the main story of Up (and the film throws in some of the style of I Am Legend), goes through motions you'll see coming fairly easily, and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 doesn't pretend otherwise. This gives it at least a little bit of wiggle room to subvert scenes slightly when it can, not least when one character does their inevitable 'walking away from the other in disappointment' moment.
If Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 doesn't quite feel as grounded in its storytelling as the original, though, it does have something else up its sleeve: a willingness to just go a bit bonkers from time to time. At a point where family movies struggle a little for identity, the visual splendour on offer here feels distinct, and the filmmakers (the film is charmingly announced in the opening credits as 'another film by lots of people') go to town with it. It'd be fascinating to have sat in the animators' brainstorming sessions to see just what kind of things they rejected, so gloriously bananas are some of the things that made the final cut.
They're not quite enough, in truth, to paper over the pretty obvious path the sequel follows, and it does feel that there was a better idea than an outright story here (ironically, the first film had a better story, but it didn't quite stretch convincingly across the full feature). Yet there's enough fruity fuel in its proverbial tank once again, and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 is a welcome, quality sequel, which very much makes the idea of a third instalment a welcome one. Anyone who's ever attended a creative writing class will have heard that best thing a writer can do before they've written a word is just observe. Although this conjures up visions of neurotics with notebooks, wasting hours on benches, slugging down coffee and scrawling "woman with hat, woman without hat, man with trainers, man in suit", etc, until their wrists snap, there's nevertheless some truth to the tip. All of us, writers or not, are forever observing things. Quite often it's stuff too mundane to bother processing, but it's all in there somewhere, sloshing around just waiting to be given meaning.
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monababi 10 years, 6 months ago
es up visions of neurotics with notebooks, wasting hours on benches, slugging down coffee and scrawling "woman with hat, woman without hat, man with trainers, man in suit", etc, until their wrists snap, there's nevertheless some truth to the tip. All of us, writers or not, are forever observing things. Quite often it's stuff too mundane to bother processing, but it's all in there somewhere, sloshing around just waiting to be given meaning.
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