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Click to viewDear friends,
A year or more, or less, ago I learned that the children's book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was being adapted into a computer animated film. I immediately hated it on principle alone. How could you explain the adaptation of a book with no story into a feature film? It had to be a grab for money and merchandising and all that garbage. It was going to be like all the Ice Age movies combined basically.
Fast forward a little bit and it is revealed that Phil Lord and Chris Miller, creators of Clone High, will write and direct the movie. My heart sank, and I said "what the what." How could this be? How could they sink so low? Are times so lean? Clearly, something was horribly wrong.
Still I was adamant that the movie was destined to be terrible, something was totally fishy about it. I was just fundamentally opposed to its existence on a primal level, just repulsed to my very core. It was so intuitive and instinctual that I didn't need to see the movie ever at all for any reason, it was a Dreamworks animation-abortion full of fart jokes and record scratches, I was so certain.
But I couldn't just be a stubborn douchebag about it and leave it be. Thats at thing a douchebag would do. So, in order to silence the turmoil of my inner demons, I set out to get it straight, and watched that movie.
Lovers, I am here today to tell you that I begrudgingly admit that Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is actually kind of great.
And the reasons are because of Phil Lord and Chris Miller! The exact x-factor that shook my convictions! If you like Clone High at all, you will probably like this movie. What I originally saw as weird bad designs revealed themselves to be slightly advanced Clone High designs IN 3D! I kept seeing Abe in the main character. There are a couple shots where he does the Clone High glassy eyed wonderment face and it made my heart pitter patter.
And babies, the movie is actually funny. Not in a kid movie sort of fart stupid way. Like Clone High! Like actually funny! And Bill Hader is good in it, and Mr. T is good in it, and Andy Samberg and Bruce Campbell, everyone is good in it! Even NPH is in it! I mean, he's a monkey but he's good at it!
And you know what? It doesn't really have anything to do with the book, beyond that food falls out of the sky and sometimes it is abnormally large, absolutely nothing is similar. But instead its like someone told Lord and Miller to make up whatever they wanted as long as it had food falling out of the sky. Those guys know what the eff is up, because, yeah. There just is basically nothing wrong with this movie at all.
I have never been so glad to be so totally way off about judging a thing before ever actually giving it a chance.
Damn son! Me and Benito love Clone High and are pretty good at making jokes!