Sneak Peek: 'Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs' Looks Mostly Sunny

Cinematical got a sneak peek at several of the scenes from Sony's upcoming CGI film Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs recently, and about the worst thing we can say about it is that it's Pixar ... ish. Which is a bit like saying, "Gee, your watch sure looks like a Rolex." Not entirely insulting. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, and Cloudy looks extremely sharp, the jokes are funny, and it made me very hungry. Plus it has a great voice cast featuring Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Bruce Campbell, Neal Patrick Harris, Andy Samberg, Tracy Morgan, James Caan, Bobb'e J. Thompson, Will Forte and Mr. T (!). So who's complaining?

Writer/directors Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, creators of the gone-before-its-time Clone High (which I can't praise enough -- unfortunately it's only available via bootleg, or in Canada), took us through the story behind the children's book turned into only the third CGI big-screen extravaganza from Sony Pictures Animation (who also doled out Open Season and Surf's Up). They also showed off some of the completed scenes in 3D, and you can read all about it and check out some new images behind the jump. This wasn't very high on my radar this year, but now that I've had a taste, we're ready for a full serving.

For those of you not in the know, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs was an illustrated children's book by Ron and Judi Barrett that first appeared in 1978. It's since become a wacky and beloved family classic, and is very light on story, and heavy on illustrations. The plot is fairly basic: residents of a town called Chewandswallow experience precipitation in the form of food three times a day, and they set sail on boats made out of bread for more normal shores.

Like The Iron Giant, Shrek, and The Polar Express that came before it, Cloudy was significantly expanded beyond the covers of the book to make it a cinematic experience. If you've ever seen the books those movies are based on, you know how slim they are. As a result, filmmakers ended up using the stories as a rough framework, while devising completely new plots for the films, and Lord & Miller came up with their own unique take on the material.


In the film version, scientist Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) has had a long string of failed experiments, including a bizarre combination of rats and birds -- a ratbird that plagued the town of Swallow Falls. It's a dull and dreary place built entirely around sardine canning, and that's all they have to eat. Flint tries to build a machine that will synthesize any food out of water, but that too goes awry and sails into the clouds above the city like a rocket from the Apollo era.

However, shortly afterward, cheeseburgers begin plummeting from the heavens. It worked! Of course, since this is a movie, something goes dreadfully wrong. At first the citizens are in food utopia where anything they can imagine rains down: ice cream, steaks, you name it. But Flint's machine begins growing in size, and so does the food. They close the school when it gets flattened like a pancake by ... a giant pancake, and so on. Flint, aided by weather reporter Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), then has to try to save the town.

Phil Lord pointed out, "The book is really very short. It doesn't have a whole lot of characters. It's a very simple plot and it luckily works well as a movie structure, sort of like the Jurassic Park plot, which was like, 'Wouldn't it be neat if there were dinosaurs? Yeah, wow, that'd be really neat. Oh wait that would be really bad and horrible and dangerous. Let's get out of here.' That's basically the plot of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, but with food instead of dinosaurs."


Christopher Miller agreed, and said they were both surprised when Sony approached them to direct it. They'd worked on the story and script for a year and a half, but had moved on to writing duties on How I Met Your Mother when they got a call asking if they'd be interested in directing it. He points to their experience on Clone High as invaluable background to jump into a feature, "A lot of the same things apply. There's still timing and comedy and storytelling and they're all basically the same, but you just have an incredible amount of resources and you're working with so many other great artists."

So what does it look like? If you could imagine Pixar humans with about 15% of the Muppets thrown into their DNA, you'd have something resembling the cast of Cloudy. Lord & Miller both acknowledged that the Muppets were an influence, and worked closely with the animators in creating unique looks for each of the characters. Flint's father Tim (James Caan) has a unibrow that recalls Sam the Eagle, Flint himself has Zoot's nose, and Sam looks slightly like Janice would if she'd ever opened her eyes.

That's not to say every character looks like a Muppet. Mr. T looks like a highly stylized vinyl figure of himself, sans mohawk and multiple gold chains, and his son played by Bobb'e J. Thompson looks like an adorable little Little Rascal come to (virtual CGI) life. The town itself also looks very realistic, and I thought many of the photos on one wall in their storyboard area were reference shots from a real town. They weren't. They were CGI renders of the town they'd created for the movie, which is the largest virtual town ever created for an animated film.


There's a large palette of different sources on the screen: Flint's laboratory is very Tron influenced, the town itself is gray and dreary before the food starts falling, at which point it turns bright and cheerful. Speaking of the food, it all looks mouth-wateringly good. Seriously. The plummeting burgers look amazing when they pop open and spill out lettuce, pickles and tomatoes. The 3D was a nice touch, and not the gimmicky "OH MY GOD!" factor, and Miller & Lord had just found out shortly before my visit that the movie will be appearing in IMAX theaters in 3D as well. I'm sure it'll look just dandy in 2D, too, if that's what you're into.

Besdies Hader and Faris as the leads, the cast rounds out as follows:

• James Caan plays Tim, Flint's father. He looks like a gruff bear of a man, and makes a living as a mechanic. He's extremely confused and frustrated by his wannabe inventor of a son.
  
• Andy Samberg plays Baby Brent, a former child star who appeared in a sardine ad (think the little Coppertone girl) who now lives off residuals and is a general jackass. Lord calls him, "The most appalling character in the entire world."
• Neil Patrick Harris plays Steve, Flint's monkey who has been hardwired with a speech device. However, he usually only runs around saying his own name.
  
• Mr. T plays Earl, the valiant policeman in town. He doesn't look particularly T-ish, although there's an homage to T late in the movie as he crashes through an enormous nacho chip.
• Bobb'e J. Thompson stows his famously foul mouth for this movie. "He's actually a very professional, very nice kid," said Miller. He plays Cal, Earl's adorable son, and they have a very tight father/son relationship. One that Flint wishes he had with his own dad.
  
• Bruce Campbell plays the town mayor, who is heavily modeled after Mayor Vaughn from Jaws. He doesn't want the food phenomenon to end, because it will kill the tourism dollars (sound familiar?). He also embraces the food wholeheartedly, and becomes enormously fat throughout the film.
• Will Forte plays the voice of "Everyman" in the movie. According to Lord, "We initially were going to cast lots of normal voices as the townspeople, and we thought 'Hey, what if they all have the same voice?' So Will Forte became that voice."

One nifty touch: Phil Lord asked Ron Barnett about an image from the book of a little kid wearing a Groucho Marx glasses and mustache disguise drawn back in the corner of the Roofless Restaurant. Barnett told him, "Oh, that's just a little inside joke to myself, because the food falls 'From de skies.'" De skies ... disguise. Holy bad puns, Batman! So, Lord & Miller made sure to include that same little kid in the movie.

I was barely aware of this film before, and I left very excited about it. And not just because of the Clone High connection. There's a lot of funny stuff in this film, both for children and adults, including one prominent monkey poop joke that both audiences will appreciate. Cloudy comes out on September 18th, which just seems too far away. We'll be bringing you more about this movie until then, so stay tuned.