Partly Cloudy and a Chance of Meat Balls

[SeattleUte]

I took my three youngest to this today, considering it hard labor. I was very pleasantly surprised. The chasm between the lack of promise in this movie's premise and the execution may be greater than I've ever seen. There are many funny gags and scenes, it's a parable against junk food and gluttony, a fine parody of natural disaster flicks, and the visuals are excellent. I liked it better than UP. Of course you must rate a film like this against the competition, on a curve, what it sets out to achieve. FOUR STARS. A solid piece of work, in its own quirky way almost flawless.

[TripletDaddy]

how old are your children? I was curious about this one and my children are asking about it. Mine are just shy of 5 yrs old. Do you think it would work for that age demo?

[marsupial]

how old are your children? I was curious about this one and my children are asking about it. Mine are just shy of 5 yrs old. Do you think it would work for that age demo?

I haven't seen the movie yet but both my 7-year-old and my 4-year-old liked the book, so I assume 5-year-olds would dig on the movie.

Where the Wild Things Are comes out next week which means that theaters will be showing two full-length movies based on two relatively short picture books. I am curious how they stretched out both story lines.

[Moliere]

how old are your children? I was curious about this one and my children are asking about it. Mine are just shy of 5 yrs old. Do you think it would work for that age demo?

I just saw it today. Took my kids all which are all under 8 years old. They all liked it. Mrs. Jones also really liked it. It was worth seeing because it really was funny (my humor is a being skewed so don't hold me too it) but it doesn't really attempt any deep meaning like you'll find with Pixar movies.

In all, I'd give it a solid B. The visuals were lacking for an animated movie but are adequate I guess. The story was predictable. The humor was good. I'd give it a B- but since it has Mr. T in it I had to raise my grade up to a B.

[falafel]

One of my best friends was the Character Setup Lead on this show. Basically, as far as I understand it, he was the "architect" of several of the characters, including Flint Lockwood, Steve, the Mayor, and Baby Brent. He's worked on several big Sony movies, but this is the one he was most proud of. When he first started working on it, he was not into it. There were problems with the director, and things weren't coming together. They got a new director on board and the team apparently came together and put out a really great movie. In the opening credits it says "This is a film by a lot of people" to highlight the fact that it took everyone pulling together to get it done.

I encourage all to go see it. Its really very funny, and like SU said, visually its a lot of fun to watch. My friend that worked on it kept saying how it was the first animated film in a long time (relatively speaking) that understood that it was a cartoon (e.g. Baby Brent in a chicken's body). I will say that it was tons of fun and very imaginative.

DDD, I would say that your almost-five year olds would enjoy it. My barely 6 year old loved it, and I think he would have loved it a year ago as well.

Oh, and SU, I should correct you. There's no "Partly" before Cloudy in the title of the movie.

[falafel]

In all, I'd give it a solid B. The visuals were lacking for an animated movie but are adequate I guess. The story was predictable. The humor was good. I'd give it a B- but since it has Mr. T in it I had to raise my grade up to a B.

I'm not really sure how you can say this. If you're talking globally, as in "the hero fixes the problems and gets the girl," then sure, it was predictable, but so is every other animated movie out there. On more of a micro level, it was a very imaginative story with several twists I didn't exactly see coming.

What about the visuals were lacking for you? I won't say it was "stunning" visually, but I wouldn't say it lacked much either. Its not Finding Nemo, but nothing else is Finding Nemo either. I'd say the visuals in this movie are on par, if not better, than most animated movies that have come out over the last 3 years or so.

Mr. T. was funny. FLEENT LOCKWOOOOOD!

[ewth8tr]

how old are your children? I was curious about this one and my children are asking about it. Mine are just shy of 5 yrs old. Do you think it would work for that age demo?

I took my kids and they loved it, including my 5 year old daughter.

[SeattleUte]

how old are your children? I was curious about this one and my children are asking about it. Mine are just shy of 5 yrs old. Do you think it would work for that age demo?

8, 5, and almost 4. My three year old daughter is a genius and somewhat mature but I had to let her sit on my lap half the movie and eat all the pop corn she wanted. They all loved it. I've discovered any more they rate anything with a plot and any suspense at all PG. I'm careful about such things.

[Katy Lied]

We just saw it this evening and I loved it. I usually am reading a book or working a craft or something when I watch videos, but I stopped because there were a lot of sight gags I was missing. (The Mr. T. buttock clench was very very funny.)

It was also fun to shout out the names of the various movies this one referenced, like Aliens and War of the Worlds.

[TripletDaddy]

We bought this DVD recently and now my kids want to watch this all the time.

I really enjoyed it, as well.

Mr T stealing the show. Who knew?

It is definitely filled with a lot of humor that kids won't catch. I really get a kick out of the scene when Sam is in Flint's lab and she says "I can't believe I've been watching this screen for 3 hours..."

Also, the dad trying to figure out how to send an email. I had a very similar phone conversation with my mom several years ago, except I wasn't trying to save the world from a gastronomy holocaust.