Fun with Puns: A “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2” Review

If you’re afraid that watching this movie would ruin your diet, fear not. After watching this, I don’t think that I’ll be seeing a Quarter Pounder Burger the same way again.

Set right after the events that happened on the first Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movie, we see all the residents of Swallow Falls relocate to San FranJose, California as super-inventor Chester V, the CEO of Live Corp, dedicates his company to cleaning up all the leftovers in the island. Flint Lockwood, our young inventor who created the FLDSMDFR (which means Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator. Wow that was a mouthful!), now works at Live Corp, determined to impress Chester with his inventions and become a Thinkanuaght. Unknown to Flint, his invention has survived, and is now creating “Foodimals” who have already taken over the island. Fearing that the new creatures would take over the rest of the world, Flint goes back to Swallow Falls. But what he discovers there, is something even his genius mind finds hard to grasp.

“Foodimal”. Now that’s cute. This could be something new that Foodies like me can call ourselves. This is actually my favourite thing about the movie – it creatively played with words that every now and then I’m watching out for the names of the Foodimals that the characters meet along the way. We’ve got susheep, subwhales, canteloups, cheese-spiders, bananastrich, shrimpanzees, tosquitos, and a tacodile supreme! I can just imagine the fun that the creators of this movie must have had when coming up with crazy but unique food-animal combinations. Think of Pokemon, only catchier.

The play with words doesn’t end with the names of the Foodimals, it extends to the script itself! This is a pun-filled (see what I did there? *wink wink*) movie with lots of wit mixed into the script, making it very enjoyable even for a grown-up like me (it’s so sad already having to call myself a grown-up). This, coupled with the exaggerated animated movements of the characters and the noteworthy performances of the voice actors made the movie a hilarious riot!

The film was funny all throughout, and it managed to keep the hilarity up as it went on. The humour in this movie went beyond the usual kiddie fun that we get from animated films, although it’s still got those sappy moments and cheesy reconciliations. It doesn’t get as emotional as a Pixar film though, which was okay since I was really after the fun, not the sentimentality.

In spite of the really simple plot, I can say that this film meant business. Not a lot of time was used up for exposition and the situation is established quickly – we even know right away who the bad guy is going to be.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 definitely did not disappoint. It was smart, fast-paced, and hilariously entertaining. It was a great sequel to a great movie, although I can imagine the vegetarians getting furious about this film – making animals literally look like food.