3D BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2

Thomas J. Norton  |  May 23, 2014

Picture
3D-ness
Sound
Extras
In 2009’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, ace boy inventor Flint Lockwood had clearly bitten off more than he could chew with his latest invention, a device that produced food from water vapor. Dubbed the Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator (or FLDSMDFR—pronounced “fldsmdefer”), it inundated his island home of Swallow Falls with a tsunami of edibles. Now the town has been evacuated, and Flint, his dad, his pals, and the rest of his fellow townsfolk have been moved to San Franjose, California, where Flint takes a job as a fledgling inventor at Live Corp.

But events have slipped out of control back at Swallow Falls. The FLDSMDFR was never recovered and has gone rogue there, producing all manner of vegibeasts including cheesy spiders, shrimpanzees, watermelofants, and other epicurean horrors. Live Corp has been chosen for the cleanup, and its CEO and famed inventor Chester V (Flint’s childhood hero) selects Flint to return to Swallow Falls, find the FLDSMDFR, and clean up the mess.

514cloudy.box.jpgWhat follows is an adventure as off-the-wall and entertaining as the original film. Flint and friends meet a cute and cuddly strawberry (they call him Berry) and fight through a jungle while running a gauntlet of homages to scores of other films including King Kong, Stargate, How to Train Your Dragon, and Jurassic Park. Some of the creatures they…um... meat along the way might be a bit scary for the preschool set, though a Tacodile (Supreme) is hardly as frightening as a T-rex.

The computer animation is superb, and the production design and transfer to Blu-ray are gorgeous. The color palette is over the top and as vivid as any I’ve yet seen in an animated film. The 3D does reduce the 2D’s eye-poppingly bright visuals but makes up for it (provided your 3D display isn’t too dim) with an impressive use of depth. And I saw no ghosting or other 3D nasties. The audio is similarly impressive. There isn’t a lot of deep bass here, but the dialogue, music, and effects are clean, open, and as enveloping as you could ask for.

The extras include several mini-movies, previews, a commentary track, and a music video of the song that also plays over the end credits. And the end credits are so entertaining that they have one of the discs all to themselves. Altogether, this three-disc package is superb and a must-have for animation fans.

Blu-Ray 3D
Studio: Columbia Pictures, 2013
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Audio Format: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Length: 95 mins.
MPAA Rating: PG
Directors: Cody Cameron, Kris Pearn
Starring: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan

COMMENTS
utopianemo's picture
Submitted by utopianemo on May 26, 2014 - 7:19pm

I had no interest in watching the first one when it came out; it was only out of necessity(kids had run out of distractions and this was the only thing on Netflix they wanted to see) that I sat down to watch this one.
Am I glad I did! I tend to love absurdist humor, and Cloudy 2 has it in spades. Of particular hilarity is the writing for Officer Earl, a fitness-oriented cop whose chest hair behaves like Spider-Man's "spidey sense".
It's no Pixar film, although with that film company's lackluster record as of late, perhaps that's a good thing. There weren't any particularly meaningful moments in the film, just good laughs: "I don't get vests", Flint Lockwood's hardscrabble fisherman father Tim quips. "What is it, winter on your torso, and summer on your arms?"