Director: Cody Cameron, Kris Pearn,
Starring: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Will Forte, Andy Samberg, Benjamin Bratt, Neil Patrick Harris, Terry Crews, Kristen Schaal,
Running Time: 95 Minutes
Certificate: U
Extras: Filmmaker Commentary, Anatomy Of A Foodimal, Production Design: Back In The Kitchen, Awesome End Credits, Cloudy Cafe: Who’s On The Menu?, Building The Foodimals, The Mysterious Sasquash, Delicious Production Design, Cody Simpson “La Da Dee” Music Video & Making Of, 4 Deleted Scenes, 4 Fun Mini-Movies,
We return to Swallow Falls in this sequel to the hit animated film of 2009. With Christopher Miller and Phil Lord flying the coup to focus on the 21 JUMP STREET franchise and THE LEGO MOVIE, it’s up to Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn to handle proceedings. With this being PEarn’s directorial debut and Cameron only feature being OPEN SEASON 3 you’d be right to be suspicious of this unnecessary yet still enjoyable sequel.
The main characters from the first outing join forces to shut down Flint Lockward’s (Hader) food creating machine, after it has terraformed their hometown into a land writhe with food related animals. The plot is needless, but serves the visuals very well. Every shot is packed with thousands of minute details, endless sight gags, and a rich array of colours. Surprisingly though, it’s almost too much for the senses, with the brightness obviously cranked up to compensate for 3D glasses in the cinema, but unaltered here. The deleted scenes are much more tolerable, as they have a certain gritty edge to them. The film also suffers on home entertainment formats due to the number of sequences and shots designed for the 3D offered by cinemas.
Characters constantly hold items up to the screen, and entire set pieces, such as a bungee underwear moment, seem very forced and unnatural. The shot compositions are also very dull, as everything is aligned to make the most of 3D. Meaning we’re left with generic centred shots presented at eye-level. This is inescapable to notice, and makes the film feel half-complete and the viewer short changed.
The humour is also a step down, resulting on endless food related puns. Thankfully I’m a lover of a cheap pun, but even for me this was overkill. Other moments are wripped directly from its predecessor, and Neil Patrick Harris’ fantastic turn as Steve The Monkey, is called upon whenever the writers hit a stumbling block. Luckily for them, the delivery from Harris is always top-notch no matter what single word it is he’s yelling.
Fun, bright, and anarchic, the film makes the most of its limited plot, and the addition of Chester V. (Forte), a Steve Jobs inspired megalomaniac, is fantastically funny, especially in his never ending hand gestures. But even this is tarnished by the fact that Jobs has passed away and this may be considered insensitive. Especially since he died long before the film went into production. A great adventure with some nice extras, which are all in bite-size chunks for the little ones to enjoy, but if I were a betting man, I’d say you’d have more fun over at THE LEGO MOVIE.
[usr=3]CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 is released on Blu-ray and DVD on 17th February.
