Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2nd Trailer
Sony Pictures Animation Movie Stars Bill Hader, Anna Faris
Jul 13, 2009
It's hard to decide how Sony Pictures Animation's Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs will turn out.
After eyeballing the film's first official trailer (seen here, courtesy of the good folks at Movie-List.com), this movie looks pretty good: directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Clone High) have recast Judi and Ron Barrett's 1978 bestselling children's book into a spoof of Michael Bay-style disaster flicks. This is the 2nd trailer for this flick and it's batting 2 for 2, a very good sign.
On the other hand, the fact that this flick is getting a September release date – a time when studios often "dump" their least promising movies – doesn't bode well for its quality. Is SPA needlessly pessimistic about this film's chances, or do they know something we don't?
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs Stars the Voices of Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Bruce Campbell and Mr. T.
The film follows hapless inventor Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader), who creates a weather machine that converts water into food. Long scorned for his useless inventions, Lockwood becomes a hero for solving world hunger at a single stroke. However, his machine soon rebels and starts creating massive food storms that threaten to crush all of humanity. Anna Faris, Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell, James Caan, Neil Patrick Harris and Mr. T also voice roles in the flick.
There are several funny bits in this trailer: gotta love the sequence featuring a fortune cookie falling on the Great Wall of China, or the kids' reaction when pancakes flatten their school. Overall, it's a lot of fun. The fact that the previous trailer was pretty funny (and without a lot of recycled jokes) is a good sign for this film's prospects.
The behind-the-camera talent also reassures. Clone High was a genuinely funny (albeit controversial) television cartoon featuring pubescent clones of famous figures like JFK, Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Joan of Arc, and Cleopatra interacting in a suburban high school.
Unfortunately, the show outraged people who felt the show depicted Gandhi in a highly unflattering light. A 2003 protest by Indians in New Dehli which included several members of parliament, who promised to fast to show their disapproval of the show, sparked an immediate apology by MTV and may have hastened Clone High's demise.
Will this flick break Sony Pictures Animation's less-than-stellar record for feature-length animated films? Or will it become another sign that Sony is nowhere near ready to stand to-to-toe with DreamWorks Animation, Fox/Blue Sky or Disny/Pixar in the CGI arena?
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs falls into theatres on September 18th.
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