12th Feb: A new policy is being put in place for TRS threads: Make your case that the name/page is broken in the Opening Post, or the thread will be nuked immediately. See Everything You Wanted To Know About Changing Names for what "Make your case" means.
5th Feb: Echo Chamber Season 1 blooper reel on Youtube here
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is a 2009 CGI animated film based on the children's book of the same name. In a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean named Swallow Falls, Flint Lockwood always dreams of "inventing something AWESOME," but his inventions never quite work the way he wants them to. Even when he grows up, he still prefers to invent more and more things instead of getting a suitable job at his father's sardine shop.But when all the residents have to eat around the island are sardines, Flint becomes a hero when he invents a machine that can convert water into any kind of food the user wants! This makes him world-famous thanks to the coverage of junior anchor-woman Sam Sparks, who Flint forms a crush on. But can he keep the machine under control, get his father's approval, and win Sam's heart?Created by Sony Pictures Animation, who also made Open Season and Surf's Up. Written and directed by the same two guys from the short-lived animated show Clone High. Cloudy has had the biggest opening week for Sony Animation yet, and it stayed in 3rd place in the box office after a month in theatres. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe award.Apparently, it is getting a Sequel.
The book provides examples of:
Completely Different Title / Dub Name Change: The French title for the book was Il Pleut Des Hamburgers (It's Raining Hamburgers). And yet, the cover still displayed spaghetti and meatballs. Go figure.
In France, ground beef in general can be called hamburger, so if the meatballs are made from beef, it still makes sense.
That's actually the French-Canadian title, the French translation is "Tempête de boulettes géantes", "Giant meatball Storm".
And in French Canada, "Hamburger" only ever describes the same thing it would in english.
Middle Eastern countries tend to rename it some variation of "Falafel Rain".
Actor Allusion: Officer Earl Devereaux is voiced by Mr. T, and his character sure acts a lot like him. One of his lines also includes a variation on "I pity the fool."
He has a bald spot which is the exact opposite of Mr. T's bald head with mohawk, and T-shaped facial hair.
Not to mention that during the food flood as he's carrying his wife and son on a raft, he jumps through a fallen tortilla chip and comes out the other side, a "T"-shaped hole visible right behind him.
Adaptation Expansion: The book was a story about a grandpa telling a tall tale about an island that had significantly different weather where it rained food. The movie is about a scientist who invents a method that turns water into food, and it affects the weather across the world.
AI is a crapshoot The Remote Control television which runs off, & is then seen at various points throughout the movie doing its own thing. Also the FLDSMDFR at the end of the film won't allow anyone to intefere with its endless food production to the point of creating sentient food to defend itself.
All of the Other Reindeer: No one in the town (except his mother, but she's dead anyway) accepts Flint Lockwood and his mad scientist demeanor until he creates a machine that makes it rain delicious food, meaning that they no longer have to suffer through eating their disgusting sardines. Flint must also use his mad scientist skills to save the town (and the world!) from this same machine when it starts malfunctioning in disastrous ways.
Also applies to Sam Sparks, who was teased for being a nerd when she was younger, but she reverts back to her openly nerdy demeanor just in time to save the world alongside Flint.
All There in the Manual: Earl, Brent, and the mayor's last names are never mentioned in-film, but are given on the official website (Devereaux, McHale, and Shelbourne, respectively).
Almost Kiss: Lampshaded repeatedly to great comedic effect.
Alternative Foreign Theme Song: Shoko Nakagawa wrote "Rainbow Forecast" as the Japanese ending theme, differing slightly from Miranda Cosgrove's "Raining Sunshine". If you picture the ending credits with this, the song actually fits pretty well.
Anthropomorphic Food: Toward the end, giant roast chickens and walking gummi bears appear.
Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Almost literally. When we are first introduced to Officer Devereaux, he is stopping Flint from hooking up his food machine to the town's electric generator to power it. Flint distracts Devereaux with a jaywalker.
It also said he mutated the water with microwave radiation. That is not possible, as microwave radiation only speeds up the movement of atoms, causing it to heat up.
Plus he is surprised to see the atoms shaking around in the foods' molecular structure.
Though microwaves can't do that, it could potentially be a form of elemental fusion/fission. Remove two protons from an oxygen's nucleus and you get carbon... but that would still be failing physics.
This film depicts a storybook world that runs on the Rule of Funny. Any scientific errors are probably as fully intentional as everyone in Swallow Falls being forced to eat sardines 24/7 just because the plant closed down.
Due to people finding them really gross no less (it reaches front-page news).
If you consider "mutation" simply a change in basic structure or reasons of this structure and not necessarily DNA, then you can mutate water if you employ strong electromagnetic field or somehow manipulate vacuum polarization effectiveness or even change universal constants, but effects wouldn't generate meatballs, only possibly make existing ones inedible. However, if one would want to make food from thin air (or water), one would have to transmutate a lot of atoms and combine a lot of molecules; the process could also provide enough energy to self-sustain the machine's work (if fusion and not fission is the dominating process), which actually happens in the story. This might be partially intentional.
Author Appeal: Chris Miller and Phil Lord, the writer/directors, are total nerds, hence the shift from a tale about cool food to a tale about how awesome it is to be nerdy.
Avoid The Dreaded G-Rating: The sole content descriptor for the film (rated PG) is "brief mild language." "Hellhole," "crabballs" and "crotch kick!" (when Brent first starts attacking the chickens) are probably what qualified the film for the rating.
In the UK release, the language is still there, but the film is certified U (The UK equivilent to a G) with the content descriptor reading 'Contains one use of mild language and scenes of mild comic threat'.
Bathos: The scene where Flint takes his father to the Roofless. It's a sad and serious scene, but you can help but laugh when the steak lands on Flint's head, and the commentary to the movie reveals this was intentional.
During several scenes in the film, the drama is interrupted by food falling everywhere. The characters usually just ignore it.
Beat Still, My Heart: Parodied when Steve rips out Gummy Bear's "heart" and eats it.
Beautiful All Along: Flint encourages Sam to embrace the "nerdy" image she abandoned from childhood because that's who she is. Drops an anvil about the fact that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Big Eater: The Mayor, to the point where he eats his own life raft.
Big Red Button: Flint installs one to activate the orders into the food weather machine, and of course, he HAD to make it big, bright, and glowing red.
Blah Blah Blah: "Here's what I heard: blah blah blah, science science science BIGGER."
Blinding Bangs: Flint's father. Though in his case, it's a blinding unibrow.
As well as Manny's blinding baseball cap.
Blind Without 'Em: Before putting on her glasses, Sam apparently sees Flint as a blurry, big-chinned, handsome man.
Born in the Wrong Century: Flint's dad, who can barely send an email to his son (and ends up sending the wrong thing anyways).
Cheeky Mouth: Inverted; the animators deliberately altered the models so they would have a distinctive profile. See "Cutaway Mouths" header.
The idea was to achieve an extremely clean silhouette while treating the mouth as a two dimensional element. If you could see the other side of Flint’s face its terrifying, the skin is pulled back almost to his ear wrecking all the geometry on that side of his face. In the end it didn’t matter as long as you could see clearly through his mouth.
Chekhov's Armoury: Every minor detail will show up again eventually.
Even the Hair Unbalder shows up again about halfway through. When Flint is sitting in the trashcan outside his lab, he uses the Sprayon Shoes, Hair Unbalder, and himself as examples of trash.
Also, the peanut allergy, while it does come up, isn't as important as one would guess from the first time it's mentioned.
Another example is the "Remote Controlled TV" Flint invented as a kid. In the opening, it kicks open the door and runs away. Later, during the giant food storm, a cherry smashes the window of a TV store and someone takes the opportunity to loot it. The RCTV then appears, smashes another window and steals the store clerk.
Chroma Key: Used by the mayor in his commercial for the unveiling.
Circling Monologue: Done very amusingly when the mayor, so obese as to need a cart, wheels around Flint and magically alternates whispering into his right, then left (then left again) ears. And then, slowly rises up from below(!).
Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Baby Brent when he, Flint, and Sam are surrounded by mutated roasted chickens inside the giant meatball. After he gets eaten by a chicken, he bursts out of it, and starts to effectively fight off the other chickens around him and carries Flint and Sam to safety!
Sam: Can you believe I've been watching this for three hours?!
Deceased Parents Are The Best: Flint's mom was loving and supportive of Flint's inventive ways. She died off screen before Flint grew up, leaving the more distant and less supportive father behind to deal with Flint.
Does This Remind You of Anything??: During the massive food storm across the world, pies are seen striking the faces of Mt. Rushmore, except one that strikes the Lincoln head from behind, which begins leaking custard out it's eyes and nose. Lincoln was killed by being shot in the back of the head.
The End Is Nigh: Two men with signboards in New York, one proclaiming "The End of the World is Today!" and the other "The End is Tomorrow!" the second guy gets crushed by a giant hot dog, and the first guy gloats, "I was right!"
Exact Time to Failure: Flint was smart enough to install a "Disasterometer", which measures how much use he has in the machine before everything goes horribly wrong.
Expy: Compare Flint to Flik. They even have similar names.
Eye Scream: Flint gets accidentally kicked in both eyes at one point.
Flint: It's fine, it's just pain..
Flint's eyes again seem to go through this when attempting to look his father in the eye. In all fairness, Tim's eyes are creepy when he lifts his unibrow...
The mayor gets a chili pepper in the eye when he fights Flint in the laboratory.
Fat and Proud: While proclaiming to Flint, "Bigger is better," the mayor slaps his enormous belly.
Fat Bastard: The originally svelte and short corrupt mayor becomes morbidly obese after eating too many raining snacks, and remains that way through the end of the movie, except during the credits sequence, where he becomes skinny again.
Foreshadowing: One of the many that immediately comes to mind is the Mayor wanting to become big... and he does. He gets really big.
Gaze upon the sunset cresting over Mount Leftovers, from which we are protected by a presumably indestructible dam!
And one that's easy to miss if you're not paying attention: When Flint is speaking voice-over in the beginning, there's a short scene that shows the present-day Flint, and can be written off as drama. That same screenshot can be seen at the climax of the movie, when Flint stops the FLDSMDFR.
Former Child Star: "Baby" Brent is a parody of this. At least, he is until his climactic rebirth as Chicken Brent!
Fridge Horror: Brent tossing away his diaper is symbolic of him liberating himself of his former image...and then you realize he's naked inside a giant chicken.
Think about it from the chicken's point of view: It eats something (Brent) which then begins wearing it as a suit, controlling its every action — and it's presumably still alive and conscious, but helpless, from that point forward... A fate worse than death indeed!
The Spray On Shoes, when you really think about them. Since they have the capability to stop the entire machine, which when you think about it, must be pushing hundreds of pounds of pressure, and eventually cause it to EXPLODE, coupled with the fact that they NEVER COME OFF, they are the ultimate bioweapon. Think about what could happen if someone sprayed them on your face. You are pretty much screwed. Let's just hope that Chewandswallow doesn't have any greedy politicians around who might want to take advantage of this. Oh. Wait.
That's possibly lampshaded when Flint takes the bottle of Spray On Shoes from Steve, saying "Don't spray that in your mouth."
Fun with Acronyms: Flint's food-weather machine. Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator, or Fldsmdfr - and Flint actually pronounces it. Sam does too by the end.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: The "SWALLOW FALLS" on top of the sardine factory after the "S" in falls starts to sag and Flint knocks the "F" off.
And a literal version too.
There's also a background character who mouths "What the fuck?" during one crowd scene. The producer didn't think it was funny, but it stayed in the completed film.
Gingerbread House: both the book and the movie feature a house made of Jello.
Groin Attack: Surprisingly effective considering it was done to a mutant roast chicken.
Hammer Space: Brent shoves the giant golden ceremonial scissors somewhere behind his back. Subverted when they don't disappear, but are shown to be in his pants when he turns around. Double subverted when the viewer realizes that the blades seem to have vanished.
Sam spends about half the movie carrying a bulky glasses somewhere on her, despite wearing tight clothing.
Flint shoves a can into his lab coat, and it immediately vanishes.
Hartman Hips: Sam Sparks and a lot of background female characters
And for those who for some reason didn't notice, Cindy Campbell as Sam.
Homage: The whole film is an homage to disaster movies, particularly Twister, Armageddon, The Perfect Storm, and The Day After Tomorrow. The main characters are based on archetypes frequently found in the genre.
The looming shadow from Independence Day also counts as an homage.
Homemade Inventions: Flint's inventions are functional some of the time, but they are all clearly a conglomeration of household accessories, with the exception of the DNA-spliced rat-birds. His lab is also functional, but looks like an 80's-style futuristic computer made of flat cardboard in his own backyard, which he enters and exits through a porta-potty.
Hope Spot: When Flint destroys Sardine Land, the world's biggest sardine screams "Yay!" as it falls from its tank, through the flaming hoop, into the ocean to freedom... just before a ratbird catches it in its talons.
Also, near the end of the film, Flint's dad survives the flood of food and sends the e-mail to Flint, only to send the wrong file by mistake.
In Name Only: Inverted. This is what many though the film was going to be once they saw the trailer, but it actually retains many elements from the story book!
Those who really know the book will be able to see illustrations lifted directly from the book during the good times montage.
It Got Worse: Since the giant meatball appears, the entire end of the movie proceeds through this course. It Gets Worse at least five times. It's like the writers DON'T want Flint to win or something.
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: A possible aversion: In order to win Sam's affections, Flint says that he is allergic to peanuts like she is. Later, in the Radioactive Meatball, they encounter a cavern full of peanut brittle:
Sam: If either one of us touches it, we'll go into anaphylactic shock!
Flint: Actually, I'm not entirely allergic to peanuts. I... might've just said that to get you to like me.
Sam: ...So you really thought having allergies would make you more attractive?
Flint: Eh...
It might not fit perfectly, but the question of why Flint thought the Ratbirds would save the town comes to mind.
Kick the Dog: Flint tells Sam to "report the weather" when she tried to warn him about the weather during the ribbon cut. In his defense, he wasn't really thinking clearly at the time, since he was already angry and frustrated about his dad not appreciating him.
Kids Are Cruel: And woefully uncreative: Sam: "They made a song about me; it wasn't even clever!""Four-eyes, four-eyes, you need glasses to see!"
Kiss Diss: When Flint tries to complete the Almost Kiss earlier in the film; a bitter Sam stops him flat.
Kitschy Local Commercial: The Mayor's commercial for Sardine Land. The animators went the extra mile to make it look as cheap as possible, even faking the worst blue-screen effects possible in a medium that doesn't even require it.
Lampshade Hanging: Throughout the entire film. Any plot twist or action has at least one character (often more) do this. They also enjoy Playing with a Trope, mainly those usually seen in animated comedies.
Level Ate: The clouds rain all kinds of food, which cover the town of Chewandswallow (previously "Swallow Falls").
Like A Son To Me: The mayor uses this line on both Brent and Flint.
Limited Animation: More like Limited Character Models, as some minor characters (such as the "Remote Control TV") reappear throughout the film, albeit on different situations.
Joe, the redneck citizen, is particularly guilty of this,as he appears in almost every scene of the movie.
This may have been intentional, as he's one of the few background characters to get a last name: Joe Towne. Joe is also the only extra to be voiced by a celebrity: Will Forte, who played Abe in Clone High and the eponymous MacGruber.
According to the writers, Joe is meant to be the voice of the town, hence the name.
The Load: Baby Brent. So much. Chicken Brent, however...
Lolcats: Flint has a video of cats singing "Fight The Power" by Public Enemy on his computer, which he uses to distract Sam.
"I can't believe I've been watching this for three hours!"
A Minor Kidroduction: The first scenes show Flint (and Brent) at eight-years-old, before skipping ahead to present day.
Miraculous Malfunction: Flint hooks up his machine to the town's power station to give it enough electricity to create food from water. Instead, the extra power makes the machine take off like a rocket and start orbiting in the lower stratosphere, creating food that comes down in showers using moisture from the clouds. Later, being overworked makes the machine start overmutating the food and it eventually gains sentience.
Missing Mom: Flint. She did have a brief scene with him as a kid, and they mentioned she died. We just don't know how. She even appears as a ghost during the end credit montage.
Nerds Are Sexy: Not only does Flint invert the Beautiful All Along plot with Sam, he seems to have several Geeky Turn-Ons. For instance, he fakes a peanut allergy because he thinks it will get Sam to like him.
Never Trust A Hair Tonic: One of Flint's failed inventions is "Hair Unbalder." A little bit squirted on the scalp causes his dad to burst out with hair on his entire face.
Never Trust a Trailer: Minor animation and editing tweaks in some shots were changed after the trailer was made.
Nobody Can Die: You'd think that food raining down at terminal velocity would hurt someone even beforeIt Got Worse, but despite spaghetti tornadoes and avalanching leftovers, the only serious injury in the entire movie is a child going into a "food coma" from eating too much candy. (He's revived by waving celery under his nose a la smelling salts.)
No Ontological Inertia: averted at ground level, but the destruction of the machine creates a shockwave that apparently clears out the red sky across the whole planet.
Parental Abandonment: Flint's mother dies ten years prior to the events of the film,and he tries to win his father's heart (as well as the townspeople's) with his inventions.
Genius Bonus: Sam describes events as an "amuse-boche
appetizer
" compared to what's to come. You can hear someone in the background asking what that is.
Planet of Hats: When the populations of various countries around the world are shown, all of them are wearing the same hats respective to their nation; i.e. the English wear bowler hats, the French wear berets..
Poster Gallery Bedroom: Flint has posters of famous scientists in his room and puts up a picture of himself as a scientist.
Mayor: Otherwise I'm just a tiny mayor of a tiny town full of tiny sardine-sucking knucklescrapers.
Brent: But not me, right?
Mayor: Oh, not you, Brent, no. You've always been like a son to me.
Professor Guinea Pig and Guinea Pig Family: Flint is shown testing out his inventions himself (and spraying his own feet to demonstrate the spray-on shoes), but his dad is also involved with the Remote Control Television and Hair Unbalder.
Red Sky, Take Warning: The sky turns a dark pinkish-grayish when the food machine goes haywire and unleashes disastrous food weather all over the world.
Relax-o-Vision: Patrick cuts from Sam reporting on the storm to a shot of a puppy scampering in the background while weather forecasts scroll down the screen.
Road Apples: That's not chocolate ice-cream Steve is flinging.
Rocky Roll Call: Almost taken to an extreme towards the end, similar to the scene in Shrek 2.
This is probably the most drawn-out version of this trope in cinema history.
Rule Of Cool: In universe example. Flint adds Tron Lines (in paint) and computer voices to his stuff for no reason other than because they're cool.
Running Gag: All of Flint's previously-failed inventions: the rat-birds, the "remote-control television".
When people surprise Flint, he always does a silly kung-fu pose. It's pretty easy to miss the first time you watch it, but he does it every single time.
The ending credits use a style inspired by Yellow Submarine. As a nod to this, they feature a short scene of the central characters dressed as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Shout outs to other sources include:
The Baby Brent mascot may be based on the famous "Coppertone Baby" [1]
During his first action montage, Flint appears to be throwing a Hadouken.
The first scene with the Ratbirds may be based on Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, including the part where one crashes into the camera.
During the Spaghetti Twister sequence, Flint runs into his own billboard, reminiscent of a scene from The Day After Tomorrow.
The plan to attack the giant meatball - RotJ Death Star anyone? A Sarlacc pit even forms inside the giant meatball.
No way was the explosion of the Fldsmdfr looking exactly like the Death Star's explosion unintentional.
Finally an insanely obscure one. The Remote Controlled TV strongly resembles the titular monster from the obscure 50's B-MovieThe Twonky, a killer alien that resembles a TV set with legs.
This leads to a Crowning Moment of Funny during the ice-cream day when she describes Swallow Falls as being "truly a la mode". This is shown being translated into several other languages in various places until it is translated in London as Swallow Falls being "truly served with ice cream".
Spider-Sense: Officer Earl's chest hairs... which are really creepy when you actually look at them.
Strange Minds Think Alike: At the start of the movie, Flint introduces his Spray-On Shoes explaining that they'll "end the untied shoelace epidemic". When Sam takes notice of them the first time they meet and Flint explains them, she says the exact same thing in response.
Take That: At the end of the film, when most of the damaging weather is being undone, we get a view of London as the shockwave passes over it. Beforehand, it's dark, grey, raining, and generally looks depressing. Afterwards, it's... dark, grey, raining, and generally looks depressing.
Tempting Fate: Far more examples than can readily be listed, with almost every form of this turning up at some stage. Put simply, seconds before anything remotely construeable as negative happens, someone will suggest everything is great or that nothing can go wrong.
"This is a great idea."
"Thank goodness you only caused minimum damage to Sardine Land!" Cue the rolling fish bowl of death...
The Theme Park Version: The major cities of the world (and their inhabitants) as seen in the film are deliberately simplified, exaggerated stereotypes. It fits with the storybook illogical logic seen throughout the entire movie.
Lampshaded when the newscaster announces that "recognizable monuments" all over the world are being destroyed first, then the rest of the world.
Not to mention the mayor, twice, attempts to make mini-theme parks within his town based off of sardines and later, raining food.
Title Drop: Played around with but never actually said.
Toilet Humor: When Flint confesses he's never been in a snowball fight, Sam reacts with surprise and says "Even Steve is throwing chocolate snowballs!" Cut to Steve on a patch of vanilla ice cream throwing "chocolate snowballs." Sam reacts with appropriate disgust.
Top Heavy Guy: Officer Devereaux, Tim Lockwood and "Baby" Brent.
Trailers Always Spoil: Some previews showed When the machine went horribly wrong. Subverted as they didn't give details on it, but still.
Tron Lines: Parodied. Flint deliberately paints them all over his lab and inventions, entirely because it looks cool. "Coolness enhancement... complete!"
Troperiffic: Despite the homage listed above, Cloudy takes the cliches of family films and makes them so blatantly obvious, toddlers could potentially understand what's going on! The directors themselves are aware of what they're doing anyway, pointing out the ENTIRE Chekhov's Armory in the audio commentary.
Troubled Fetal Position: Flint's father finds Flint in this position in a trashcan containing all his previous failed inventions, suffering a HeroicBSOD due to his food machine causing disastrous food weather and him feeling powerless to stop it. Flint is in the trashcan since he now considers himself "junk", like all his failed inventions.
Ultimate Authority Mayor: Lampshaded. The mayor mentions spending the entire town budget on Sardineland "without consulting anyone", and later funds the revamping of Swallow Falls as Chew'n'Swallow by taking out a "very high interest loan".
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is a 2009 CGI animated film based on the children's book of the same name. In a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean named Swallow Falls, Flint Lockwood always dreams of "inventing something AWESOME," but his inventions never quite work the way he wants them to. Even when he grows up, he still prefers to invent more and more things instead of getting a suitable job at his father's sardine shop.But when all the residents have to eat around the island are sardines, Flint becomes a hero when he invents a machine that can convert water into any kind of food the user wants! This makes him world-famous thanks to the coverage of junior anchor-woman Sam Sparks, who Flint forms a crush on. But can he keep the machine under control, get his father's approval, and win Sam's heart?Created by Sony Pictures Animation, who also made Open Season and Surf's Up. Written and directed by the same two guys from the short-lived animated show Clone High. Cloudy has had the biggest opening week for Sony Animation yet, and it stayed in 3rd place in the box office after a month in theatres. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe award.Apparently, it is getting a Sequel.
0 reviews