Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Critic Reviews

A nice turn from Mr. T keeps the grade (barely) above C level.

If the filmmakers opt to make only light statements about junk food, obesity and solid waste, they at least leave the audience sated on a single serving of inspired lunacy.

A veritable buffet of the bland and the bizarre, the sweet and the sour, and all tastes are catered for along the way.

Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have written an engaging and comically absurd story with subtle messages, more sophisticated than what usually is offered in animated fare.

It's not especially filling, but it leaves a pleasant aftertaste.

So what could be better than an endless supply of jellybeans and ice cream? Only a multiplex permanently stocked with smart, sweetly silly family films like this one.

It takes an iron stomach to watch this stuff and not feel nauseated.

But it's fun, it has some good messages and what kid won't enjoy seeing pancakes flatten a roof and an ice-cream blizzard that you can eat while you play in it? Especially when it's presented in colorful 3-D splendor?

... a well-intentioned children's film that has the unfortunate effect of making food, all food, seem utterly revolting. It's the gastronomical version of 'Scared Straight!' 3-D.

It seemed to me the mountains of fudge, ice cream and pancakes overshot the mark and looked silly, and the airborne food cast a pall over the city, but by golly those kids are plucky.

This film wasn't made for you, or me. It was made for dangerously easily distracted 9-year-olds. And at least the never-enough aesthetic extends to its sheer, Augustus Gloop volume of sight gags.

Determined to have their cake and eat it too, writer-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller first invite us to revel in ice cream mountains and nacho cheese fountains, then clobber us with ham-handed nutritional moralism.

This computer-animated 3D extravaganza is the ultimate food fight, capitalizing on the universal compulsion to play with your food. But like any good food fight, it offers short-lived entertainment.

Food has never been funnier than it is in the spirited, animated family film Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

Eye-popping and mouth-watering in one, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs spins a 30-page children's book into a 90-minute all-you-can-laugh buffet.

The animated movie greatly expands on the kids' book on which it's based in a clever and engaging first half. But the second half leaves a foul aftertaste. Slapdash action scenes play against dreary warnings to fear wealth and beauty.

A delicious farce and a backhanded slap at America the Obese, it may be the funniest animated film of the year.

Hungry for some good old family-friendly entertainment? Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs should fit the bill of fare.

No comedy should come bogged down with so many Important Life Lessons.

Second-string animated movie makes it to the finish line.

The humour in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is often anarchic, wicked, random and very funny. This is a fun film with a lot of spirit.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs might not be as charming or heartfelt as anything from Pixar film, but bar Up, it's the best animated film of the year so far.

Spaghetti has never been more terrifying, Gummi bears more menacing, nor the pleasures and perils of exploring the frontiers of science more vivid

It occurs to me that the pace and tone of the comedy is actually pretty sophisticated -- perhaps too much so for its supposed intended audience.