movies: cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2

cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2 - something big was leftover
There's something about the style of comedy in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and it's predecessor that really appeals to me.

With both movies, they're not afraid to go to an absurd or stylised place with the humour but it never feels like it goes too far.

The sequel picks up quite literally where the previous movie leaves off and all the characters return.

The voice cast is excellent, although none of them are the type of actors where you automatically recognise their voices... in fact even though I've seen both movies, I didn't realise that James Caan and Benjamin Bratt voice Tim and Manny respectively.

This movie revolves around the characters returning to the island of Swallow Falls to find it inundated with sentient fruit animals (or foodimals). And this is where the movie really gets creative... there's flamangos, hippotatomus, shrimpanzees, susheep, watermelonphants, tacodiles and the cutest collection of big eyed strawberries ever.

A number of the scenes involving the foodimals directly reference Jurassic Park but the combination of the creature designs and the gorgeous backgrounds make for some amazing sequences. It's also definitely a movie where I found myself watching some of the secondary characters, particularly Steve the monkey, Barb the orangutan and Barry the strawberry.

I also can't help but think that the character of Chester V may be based a little bit on Steve Jobs... it's not a direct parody, but there's just something about the way he's portrayed.

The story itself is quite simple, but to be honest, it's all about both the visual spectacle and the jokes, both of which work really well.

Oh and the end credits are worth watching, if only because there seems to be a number of art styles at play, from what look like stop motion puppets to the kind of art work you usually see in those "behind the scenes" clips of the development of animated movies, very loose but still capturing the major element of each character.

yani's rating: 3 apple piethons out of 5

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