It’s another smash hit from Sony Pictures Animation. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 sends families lining up for seconds since its release on Sept. 27. It’s got a good moral. No matter how cheesy it looks, it’s brought back the lovable Flint Lockwood and his team of friends — Sam the meteorologist and Flint’s best friend, Chicken Brent the baby model, Manny the Guatemalan cameraman, Mr. T. the cop, Steve the monkey, and of course Mr. Lockwood, Flint’s dad. In this delicious adventure, Flint realizes the constancy of friendship, even when he dares to please his idol.
Picking up from the first film, Sony takes viewers back to Flint’s home of the island Swallow Falls, where Flint’s invention, the FLDSMDFR (Flint Lockwood’s Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator), lies hidden beneath the humongous pile of oversized food that the machine created.
When the island’s inhabitants have to evacuate, Flint’s idol, the revered scientist and inventor Chester V, appears at their aid and rescues them from Swallow Falls. Noticing Flint’s crazed fandom for him, he sends Flint on a dangerous mission for him: to destroy the FLDSMDFR and save Swallow Falls. Little does Flint know that Chester is tricking him into an evil ploy to confiscate the FLDSMDFR and replicate food to make the greatest snack anyone has ever eaten — and Sam tries desperately to steer Flint away from him.
Flint has a few character flaws in this film. Gullible, naïve and willing to please Chester at the slightest request, he scrapes at the almighty scientist’s feet and dashes to Swallow Falls at the first second. But when Sam warns him about following Chester, Flint slowly realizes that he’s been placing his idol before his friends, and here, the film shows friendship as being more constant than any revered idol, no matter how much of a hero he seems.
But as Flint realizes he can’t destroy the FLDSMDFR, no matter how hard Chester urges him, Sony grabs in another character: Barb, Chester’s talking orangutan, who constantly feels belittled when Chester calls her a monkey. When Sam tells her what true friendship means, that a friend always loves and never demeans, Barb realizes what a shallow friend Chester has been. Barb, Flint and the team finally kick into oblivion and watch as the FLDSMDFR re-spawns the food Chester destroyed, and they see the precious value of life as the talking food make families of their own.
In the end, Flint realizes that all the idolizing was worth nothing. What truly mattered was his loyalty to his friends and father, and his loyalty is what’s bringing families back to the theaters. The film sends warm and fuzzy feelings, and its humor keeps families watching it over again. Hands down, it’ll be an all-time family classic.