Review #875: 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2' (2013)

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was a pleasant surprise back in 2009, with directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord - before they hit the big-time with 21 Jump Street (2012), it's sequel 22 Jump Street (2014) and The Lego Movie (2014) - taking a rather ridiculous premise based on a slim children's story and making it both hilarious and supremely inventive. It was a story that was wrapped up nicely as not to require a sequel, but with box-office success comes the inevitable follow-up. Miller and Lord lampooned the whole idea of sequels with 22 Jump Street, but decided against helming the next chapter in Flint Lockwood's eccentric world, which makes it all the more surprising that Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 is even more delightful than the first.

With the town of Swallow Falls engulfed by giant food as a result of the events from the first film, Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader), his girlfriend Sam (Anna Faris), his father Tim (James Caan), and the rest of his fellow townsfolk are relocated to California by inventor and TV personality Chester V (Will Forte) while the place is cleaned up. Flint, Chester's biggest fan, is invited to work at Live Corp., where he will be allowed to work on his crazy inventions undisturbed in the hope of landing a permanent job. His 'celebrationator' creation falls flat, but Flint is still summoned by Chester to be informed that the search-parties back in Swallow Falls have gone missing, and the place is now overrun by giant cheeseburger spiders.

The cheespiders are just one of many delightful and bonkers 'foodimals' in the film, others of which include shrimpanzees, tacodiles and watermelophants. They're the type of physics-dodging nonsense a child would come up with while bashing plastic figures together, so no doubt children will love them. Adults too, will no doubt get a certain kick out of temporarily switching off the logical side of the brain and turning up the nostalgic side. It's also beautiful to look at, in a hyperactive, blink-or-you'll-miss-it sort of way, with the sheer volume of these bizarre creatures darting in and out of the picture providing a feast for the eyes, and the cheespiders proving to be somehow terrifying and cute at the same time.

Above all, it's laugh-out-loud funny and relentlessly chaotic, and there's probably a 'message' in there somewhere as well. Not that the film is too concerned with preaching morals and not that the audience will call for it; it's too busy being exhaustively entertaining for all that. The returning acting talent (although Terry Crews replaces Mr. T as super-ripped cop Earl Devereaux) is uniformly excellent, and newcomer Forte, along with some loopy character design, helps turn Chester V into a charismatic and ever-bending (literally) super-creep. Like a packet of sweets, it can be like a sugar overdose at times, but you'll most likely keep on eating and feel buzzed for a short time afterwards.


Directed by: Cody Cameron, Kris Pearn
Voices: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Will Forte, Andy Samberg, Benjamin Bratt, Neil Patrick Harris, Terry Crews, Kristen Schaal
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #814: 'Nebraska' (2013)

After 2011's slow-moving but well-acted The Descendants, writer/director Alexander Payne (here only on directorial duties) returns to the road-movie formula that served him so well in his greatest film, 2004's Sideways. When we first meet Nebraska's grizzled and hunched hero, Woody Grant (Bruce Dern), he is plodding along a snow-laden road, wandering without any sense of direction. He is picked up by the police and taken back to his iron-fisted wife Kate (June Squibb), who longs to put this 80-plus year old man, teetering dangerously on the cusp of dementia, in a home.

His son, David (Will Forte), is a passive young man who is unhappy in his salesman job and has recently separated from his girlfriend. He learns from his mother that his father was on his way to Lincoln, Nebraska (Woody lives in Montana) to pick up a million dollars he believes he has won in a junk mail sales scam. Where most people would throw it away without thinking twice, this grey-haired old coot believes that they can't say it if it isn't true. In his stubbornness, Woody convinces David to drive him to Lincoln, and David, having lived most of his life in the shadow of his small-town news anchor brother Ross (Bob Odenkirk), sees a chance to spend some time with the father he doesn't really know.

Like most Payne efforts, Nebraska is low on plot but high on humanity. After a long career playing eccentrics and loons, Dern gives a highly understated performance, which is without a doubt the best work he has ever done. More than just a poor old man to feel sorry for, Dern brings a history to the eyes of his character, a man who has seen his life come and go without really realising it. In one extremely touching scene, David questions his father about why he and his mother got married. Woody says "I figured, what the hell," and when David asks him if he was ever sorry he married her, he replies "all the time." It's a desperately sad and honest portrayal of a man helpless in his regret.

Yet, like most of Payne's films, Nebraska is also very funny. As Woody becomes a local celebrity in Lincoln, his home town, when knowledge of his 'wealth' spreads, Woody finds old friends (such as Stacy Keach's Ed) and half-forgotten family coming out of the woodwork looking for a handout or what they believe is owed to them. This is when Kate turns up, a small but feisty woman, prone to telling her sons about how she was the subject of many a groping hand in her youth, much to David and Ross's disgust. Squibb is magnificent, and injects energy into the film when it starts to need it. Nebraska is Payne's most mature film to date, gorgeously filmed, expertly performed, and surely now one of the definitive films about reaching the end of your path.


Directed by: Alexander Payne
Starring: Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Bob Odenkirk, Stacy Keach
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie