Cloudy With a Chance Of Meatballs 2 Combo Pack

Category: Blu-ray's and DVD's

In this sequel, Flint is called upon to help save the world once more because his invention was not completely destroyed and is causing food havoc once again. Only instead of plain food, it is creating live food and once the new, sentient food gets off the island where they are being created, well, that spells trouble for the world… again.

 

The creativity involved in this movie is amazing. When we were young we were told, “Don’t play with your food.” Apparently, filmmakers Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn never got that lecture. They played and played and played with food to come up with some pretty funny characters. They actually designed about 150 of them, however only about 40 were used in the movie. First they created the foodimals, and then the creations were animated and given names. A potato became Hippotatomus, mangos turned into Flamangos, a cucumber morphed into a flying Cucumbirdy, watermelon turned into Watermelophants, a taco became a Tacodile, squash became – what else but Sasquash, shrimp turned into Shrimpanzees, and a beet was now a Wildebeet. Are you starting to see the creativity that went into this adorable movie?

 

From the time the original movie was produced until they started on Cloudy 2, technology had advanced giving the filmmakers even more creative license with which to play. As the directors explained, the first film had a “graphic look” whereas this one looks “like a painting.”

 

“The characters are the most important thing,” said director Cody Cameron. Besides the story of Flint Lockwood with his friends from the first story, who must save the world once again, there are some other underlying stories as well. The relationship between Flint and his father Tim (James Caan) is part of the movie. Tim is a caring dad but because Flint was always into science, the father/son traditional bonding activities didn’t happen when Flint was a kid. So Tim bonds with some pickles, providing a father/grandfather sub-story, which is an amusing fishing scene. Yes, you read correctly. Tim takes some pickles fishing. As I keep saying, this film is filled with so many creative and funny aspects.

 

Creative, amusing, enjoyable, colorful, entertaining, funny, cute, adorable, and witty are all words to describe Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.

 

The Blu-ray Combo pack includes some great bonus features. First there are a few deleted scenes. As director Cody Cameron explained, some scenes were deleted for time constraints, or “sometimes an idea changes in midstream” and the scene is no longer relevant.

There are also four “shorts” – or mini-movies -, which are absolutely adorable. “Steve’s First Bath” is a hilarious story of how the little fellow was finally wrangled into a bath. “Super Manny” has Manny as a, well, Super Hero kind of guy. “Earl Scouts” is about Earl and a group of guys he is trying to teach about the survival of the fittest but things get out of hand. And “Attack of the 50-Food Gummi Bear” is enough to give anyone a large cavity when Steve is left to watch over an endearing but mischievous gummi bear that is transformed into a giant, and Steve follows suit. 

 

Besides these would be great bonus features in themselves, but there are even more, which are included in the Blu-ray/DVD combo packs. There are a lot of “making of” featurettes, including a look at the characters, production design, and creating the Foodimals. Plus, there is a look at how they created the ending credits using mixed media. Once you see this featurette, you’ll have a new appreciation for the ending credits, believe me.

 

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 runs 95 minutes and is rated PG for mild rude humor. It’s appropriate for most children.

 

And don’t forget to download the free Foodimal Funimal app for even more fun with the characters, plus the ability to synch to the Blu-ray.