Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

By Jeff Niesel

Ever since he was a young boy, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs anti-hero Flick Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) had a knack for making inventions that didn’t quite work. He perfected a laceless, spray-on shoe, but forgot to come up with a way to take it off. His remote controlled TV would get up and walk right out of the room. And his talking monkey device proved to be rather useless, too. So when he tries to convert water into a cheeseburger, there’s little doubt that something will go terribly wrong. And it does. Cheeseburgers start falling from the sky. But who doesn’t want free food? Flick quickly goes from goat to hero as the town mayor makes him a local celebrity. Dear old dad (James Caan) questions his son’s motives and so does love interest Sam Sparks (Anna Faris). But Flick soldiers on, undaunted by the criticism. While the messages are rather obvious, Hader and Faris make their characters crack, sparkle and pop, and the visual effects are terrific, too.