[Follow this link to YouTube version if you can't view the embedded trailer.]

When I first heard that Sony Pictures Animation was making a film adaptation of the classic children’s book, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, I was enthusiastic. I loved the book as a child, and I thought that the pen-and-ink style of the original illustrations could make for a groundbreaking departure from the “business-as-usual” computer animation style that has dominated the box office since Toy Story. I was disappointed, therefore, when the earliest teaser trailers emerged and revealed that the look of the film would be yet another variation on the “Pixar look,” with its careful use of soft shadows and ambient occlusion (I threw that in there for computer graphics geeks like myself… Don’t ask).

So the graphics won’t be the main draw of the film (though it is being shown in GLORIOUS 3D). How about the story? I am wary of judging movies based on children’s books ever since my biggest prediction failure to date: Horton Hears a Who! I incorrectly guessed that the film would be extremely weak, basing that prediction on the difficulty of expanding a very short and simple story into a feature-length movie and on the track record of the studio producing it, Blue Sky, who had previously made two Ice Age films and Robots. It turned out to be a pretty big hit, and more importantly to me personally, I absolutely loved it. Despite all of that, I’m going to risk repeating my mistake and say that Cloudy will not translate very well to the big screen. Cloudy is different than Horton in two important ways. First, the thing I loved most about Horton was the whimsical imagery. Elephants tiptoed across rope bridges, Whos rode down twisty streets on unbalanced unicycles, and there were constantly beautiful and/or entertaining things going on in the background. Blue Sky was able to adapt the illustrations of Dr. Seuss, always known for his delightfully strange characters and settings, and bring them to life in cool ways. Cloudy on the other hand, is based on a book that is illustrated in a lovely but conservative style. Rather than adapt the style for the movie, which would not have led to a lively-looking film, they threw it out entirely and created their own. As I mentioned already, the style they came up with is pretty generic. Second, the Horton movie took its story directly from the original book, and they were pretty faithful to the original themes and characters even though they had to expand them to fill the alotted time. The book version of Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, on the other hand, really had no story at all. It was little more than a premise (a land where food falls from the sky, which turned out the be bad in the long run) expanded to 32 illustrated pages. This left the writers of the Cloudy movie to come up with the plot and characters from scratch. They wrote an explanation for the meteorological food (a mad scientist, who is also the main character) and apparently are devoting most of the film to spoofing disaster films, according to the creators. In other words, they had to write an original story, but were bound to make at least some connection to the original book.

All of that is a long way of saying that the original storybook will in no way contribute to the quality of this movie. Still, the story may be good on its own mertis. I’m not optimistic, though. In this entire trailer, which is full of sight gags and various jokes, I only chuckled twice: once at the “Mamma Mia!” reference and the giant fortune cookie joke at the end. The rest was just… ok. I will give them credit for the complete lack of fart and poo jokes, and I’m especially impressed that there was not even one belch in the trailer considering the food themes involved. Still, if this is the best they have to offer in terms of entertainment, I remain uninspired.

The critics will not hate this movie. A few will love it, calling it “charming” and “clever.” Most, however, will probably spend most of their reviews yawning about its plot and characters, and more than a few will describe its premise as being too thin to support a movie of its length. In the end, even the unimpressed critics will recommend that you take your kids to see it because, honestly, what else is there right now? 9, maybe? Only if you have older kids, probably boys, who like science fiction.

For that reason, Cloudy will also clean up at the box office. It won’t be one of the highest grossing films of the year, but it just might be the highest grossing film of the weekend of September 18. Its competition is made up entirely of films for adults, and even among those I don’t see many big box office draws. Matt Damon will bring star power to The Informant, but the fact that he’s playing a pudgy schlub with a moustache and glasses will probably cancel that out. I predict that Cloudy will either place #1 or #2, depending on whether Tyler Perry’s latest crowd-pleaser, I Can Do Bad All By Myself, can hold onto the top slot or not.