Sony and Columbia have decided to shake the money tree again and see what falls out.  Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2 is the sequel to the pretty good 2009 original, and picks up about where the first one ended.

Plot Synopsis:

Flint Lockwood and Sam Sparks have disabled the infernal food machine, and are making plans for the future when Flint’s childhood hero, Chester V, appears.  His Live Corp has been contracted by the U.N. to clean up the mess on the remote fishing island where the first movie was set, and instructs all of the inhabitants to leave for a little while.  A little while apparently turns into months and months, as Flint, Sam, and the rest of the characters are all able to find jobs and get on with life in an over-crowded city setting.  Little does Flint know that Chester V has nefarious plans for him and his invention.  Chester V sends Flint back to his home to find the food machine, and Flint brings along the principle characters from the original movie.  Chester V and some of his minions follow, and they all see wonderous food-animal creations that now inhabit the island.  Flint eventually figures out that Chester V has been using him, and we all learn a deep lesson about family and trust.

Cloudy 2 reunites most of the cast from the original movie and adds a few new characters.  Voicing is done extremely well for all of them, including Bill Hader (Flint Lockwood), Anna Faris (Sam Sparks), Will Forte (Chester V), and Neil Patrick Harris, who turns in an Oscar worthy performance as Steve, the monkey with the brain scanning headband.  All of the characters were about as dimensional as the animation, but it’s a movie for children, so we’re not looking for Brando-esque acting.  The great thing about the characters and actors was that not a single one of the voices isn’t perfect for the character, which is something I can rarely say.

The story arc is pretty much like a Jurassic Park sequel formatted for kindergarteners.  There is a lot of physical humor and plays on words.  The most blatant of these are the names given to the food-animal hybrids (Watermelephants, shrimpanzees), and while the first few of these were humorous, after five or six, they got tedious to me.  Boo, on the other hand, was rolling in the aisles over them.  Terry Crews turns in a great performance as Earl, the policeman, but a lot of his jokes are rehashed from the first movie.  One interesting scene is where Earl is using his fingers to make a pistol as he “clears” an area, which surprised me.  I’d have thought that the studio would have removes such a blatant example of violent, anti-social behavior from a children’s movie.  \<\/sarcasm\>

The animation was pretty good.  I’ve seen the original a few times, and the characters that appear in both movies don’t seem to have changed much at all.  All of them and the new characters and animals all blend very well into the food jungle on the island.

Cloudy 2 clocks in at 95 minutes, and the pacing was, to me, a bit slow at times.  However, my 5-year-old, after consuming fruit chewies and a small popcorn, sat quietly through the whole thing.  Again, it’s a movie designed for young children, and while there are jokes and plot elements for adults, don’t go expecting that the 40-year-old will enjoy it as much as the five-year-old.

One theme that was put through it was mistrust of large businesses.  Tim, Flint’s father, is a small business owner who is one of the heroes of the movie.  Chester V, who appears to be modeled on Steve Jobs, is the oily, new-age hipster head of a mega-corporation.  There’s even a sideways swipe at the U.N. at the beginning, in that they’ve contracted with LiveCorp to clean up the mess from the first movie, and by that authority all of the residents have to get off the island and into the urban refugee camp of SanFranJose.

Overall, I’d give this one a B or B-.   It was enjoyable, but a lot of the plot elements and humor is rehashed from the first movie, and what is new is pretty heavy-handed and gets repeated a lot.  Again, it’s a kids movie, so take that into account when going to see it.  It’s definitely worth a rental fee, and if your kids liked the original, then might be worth a matinée.  God willing, we’ll all be back here in four years to talk about the completion of the trilogy, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 3:  The Search For More Money.