Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD Flint celebrates his scientific triumph.

Coming from the “distract them with shiny objects” school of child rearing, this 3-D kiddie flick careens through the first half of its running time reveling in the fantasy of food literally raining from the sky, and then, just when we’re all so sugar-whacked on giant 3-D doughnuts we can barely stay in our seats, the “serious lesson” kicks in, and we get lectured on the dangers of overindulgence.

On an island where the sardine-driven economy has collapsed when the world realizes that sardines are yucky to eat, young inventor Flint Lockwood comes up with a machine that turns water into food. His machine rockets into the stratosphere and starts creating gastro-precipitation. This makes Flint a local hero, until the machine goes haywire, as machines are wont to do.

This leads to a mission to shut the thing down and to some of the most alarming cloacal imagery we’ve seen in a children’s flick; the machine draws water in its top, and its bottom bulges and expands like a giant sphincter, erupting masses of whatever foodstuff has been requested. It’s like something William Burroughs might have hallucinated on a particularly rocky night. The tots, of course, won’t notice, and they’ll be carried along by the rapid-fire joke rhythms. But parents be forewarned: That giant food-shitting machine will haunt your dreams.