Watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

Much like Robert Zemeckis’s The Polar Express (2004) and Spike Jonze’s approaching Where the Wild Things Are, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs takes a moderately straightforward children’s book and expands it into a colossal action-exciting activity juggernaut, although thankfully the CGI computer graphics sticks to the cartoonish when rendering its characters. These movies are not so much adaptations as they are expansions, taking a essential premise that neatly fills a slim volume best read at bedtime and inflating it with additional characters, subplots, and, most critical of all, special effects and 3-D (in this case rendered by Sony’s incredible new software). That is fundamentally the approach taken by Cloudy’s writer/director team of Phil Lord and Chris Miller (making their feature-film debut) in their ambitious expanding of Judi and Ron Barrett’s 1978 book about the town of Chewandswallow and how it is beset with food raining from the sky.

Another great animation movie released was 9.The movie’s explanation for this unexplained phenomenon is one Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader), an would-be inventor whose inventions routinely end in disaster. Constantly locked away in his lofty, self-made laboratory in his father’s (James Caan) backyard, Flint has come up with such doozies as spray-on shoes (too bad they don’t come off) and a translator that allows his moustache-fixated pet monkey Steve (Neil Patrick Harris) to say his minimal thoughts in English . Flint’s latest instrument is a device that uses raditation to turn water into any kind of food he wants, but it doesn’t have quite enough power to work. He solves that problem by plugging it directly into the local power station, which results in an explosive catastrophe that is badly timed with his small island town’s unveiling of Sardineland, a sardine-themed amusement park that the ambitious mayor (Bruce Campbell) hopes will save the island from financial ruin.

This is also another chance to ranking 3-D animation and I haven't been significantly impressed by it all year. I didn't love the approach with Coraline, but I have to say, that's really the paramount example we've seen in 2009. It isn't so much that it doesn't look high-quality - because Up and Monsters vs. Aliens did look good - there's just nothing about the story or its direction that really benefits from you trying glasses. So save the extra change and just go watch it in the standard format, especially if you have kids. They don't care either way, and the glasses will be a disruption for both of you.

Enter Flint Lockwood, who develops a computer line up that will turn water into food. Any food. Cheeseburgers, pizzas, ice cream - you name it. The only difficulty is that Flint can't really control the vending contraption, so instead of making a flawlessly grilled steak, the sky rains delicious cuts of meat indiscriminately. The town loves it and is revitalized as a tourist trap. And everyone gets really, really fat.
Either way, you're likely to have a fine time with the film, especially if you're not looking for a literal version of the book.