‘Cloudy’ animated franchise turns its fortunes around

“CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2.” More creative and visually entertaining.

Last week, when we looked at the lineup of new films opening in town, we made a mental note to steer clear of “Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs 2,” because we didn’t think much about its first installment, shown some years ago, which we found messy, unfocused and not very funny.

Trouble was, the only other new movies on view were horror flicks, which we like even less than messy animated features, so we ended up watching “Cloudy 2” just the same.

Well, it turned out to be more visually inventive and generally better than the first “Cloudy” flick, so we are pleased to cite the sequel’s  plus factors, by way of this minireview:

What makes the “Cloudy” sequel an improvement on the original is its greater inventiveness and selectivity. When we watched the first film, we got the feeling that the production was throwing everything in, including the baby and the bathwater, in the vain hope of getting lucky and generating a couple of laughs.

With “Cloudy 2,” the proceedings are much less chancey and willy-nilly, since the movie has a clear plotline and conflict: Our nerdy inventor-hero is sent on a mission to clean up an island full of “food monsters” created by his great invention gone awry, and his father and friends loyally help him foil the “nasty” creatures.

Unexpected discovery

But, they soon make an unexpected discovery: The creatures aren’t monsters after all—so, they’ve been misled by our hero’s idol, who turns out to have a nasty hidden agenda which they must subvert, with the now friendly creatures’ help, to keep their fabulous gustatory Eden intact!

The perky friends’ performances keep the movie lively, but what really makes it a fun viewing treat is the colorful creativity with which the “food monsters” have been reconfigured  by the movie’s storytellers and animators.

Imagine hamburgers, pizzas and all sorts of vegetables and fruits “redesigned” as rhinos, flamingos, dinosaurs and whales? —Fun!

Less productive

We’re glad that the “Cloudy” animated film franchise has been able to turn its fortunes around by way of this more creative and visually entertaining sequel because, truth to tell, 2013 has not been a very artistically productive year for full-length animated features.

We have been less than thrilled with the “Cars” movie series, as well as its spinoff featuring airplanes, because they have tried too hard to “anthropomorphize” their storytelling and visualizations.

—Meaning, cars and planes have been animated to behave too much like humans, which is not a very productive tack to take, because those machines’ visages and “expressions” are too limited to support such detailed “humanization.”

Another relatively unproductive tack is animators’ preference for monsters. True, they’re sometimes popular with viewers, but when they’re even shown going to a school for hideous, scary creatures, the “thrill” is tautological, at best.

We hope against hope that animated features will go back to the much more rewarding time and mind-set when they came up with heartwarming winners like “Wall-E,” “Up” and “Toy Story”!