I recently got a chance to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. I was a fan of the first film and especially enjoy food-related stories and puns. The first film as had a redeeming quality, the message was to be yourself and believe in yourself.
I’d since lots of commercials for the sequel and was excited to get to see it, especially since the story had to do with sentient food, that was so cute! However, this was also the main problem with the story.
The film takes place right at the end of the first movie, just after the main character, Flint, has saved the island of Swallow Falls from a food storm, caused by a malfunction in his own water to food invention. In order to save everyone, he had to destroy his invention.
Anyways, just as Flint and friends celebrate, all of a sudden a group of helicopters land, and it happens to be renounced inventor and Flints ideal Chester V, head of live Corp. Chester announces that his team of top inventors/scientists will work to restore Swallow Falls in the meantime the entire population will be relocated to a San Francisco-like city.
Chester V arrives to Swallow Falls right where the first movie leaves off.
Very quickly it is revealed that Chester isn’t the hero Flint thought he was and his ulterior motive is to find Flint’s food invention to use as his own invention. The problem is the machine hasn’t been turned off like first thought and is now creating sentient food. These new food life forms basically take over the island making it difficult for Chester’s team to find the invention.
Chester decides to trick Flint into returning to the island to recover the machine and even starts to cause friction between him and his friends.
Swallow Falls has turned into a world of Food animals.
Although, the sequel does a good job of reuniting both the all-star cast and characters the story lacks tremendously. The story does a brief intro, assuming you already know the characters and quickly introducing new ones like Chester.
Also, Chester’s sinister motives are revealed almost at the begging to the audience, causing a lack of mystery and anticipation. The main conflict in the story is Flint not listen or trusting his friends. In the end, when he does redeem himself, it feels insincere, like yeah, I’m sorry but it was really Chester’s fault for lying so more than sorry he comes across betrayed and angry.
Lastly, though the film had some funny moments and cute food people the finally, didn’t make sense. In the first film, there was a hint that Flint’s invention was making sentient food and that would be bad. In this film, the very thing happened and in the end, they decided it was not only okay but to let it continue and they all live on the island with the food people.
This is so impractical, food should be eaten, how do you live with food people and not feel bad about eating their non-sentient cousin?? It felt as if producers were like “hey the movie did well, let’s get pay some interns next to nothing to write us a sequel so we can milk this success as long as we can”
Some people have said the evil, Live Corp is supposed to represent Apple and Chester, the late Steve Jobs. I guess I could see that in some ways, but when you see Chester in Flint’s childhood flash back, I was like did they model him after Adam Savage (@donttryrhis) of the Mythbusters?
In Conclusion, the film is worth a laugh or two, but nowhere near the story or character quality of the first film, classic sequel syndrome.