Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith

Movies

‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2’ way underdone

Whelk, I hope the makers of “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” earned a nice celery, but I’m afraid they made a hash of things. A hash seasoned with oy sauce.

The beloved children’s book-turned-semi-beloved 2009 movie is now more or less just a field upon which five writers toss half-jokes and food gags. Sample: “There’s a leak in my boat!” Pan over to: a leek in the boat. (That’s one of the better lines.)

Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader), who in the first film invented a machine that turned water into food and wound up creating disastrous (if delicious) weather, this time leaves his wrecked town, Swallow Falls, with his crew to work for a tech mogul named Chester V (Will Forte) at an Apple-like corporation called livE — a Silicon Valley Oz.

Chester V, a distinctively dressed fellow with a habit of pressing his palms together while saying “Namaste” and boasting that he has created “the coolest company in the world,” is a parody of Steve Jobs, which at least gives adults something to notice. But then again, Steve Jobs was a parody of Steve Jobs. The movie doesn’t get much mileage out of this figure, amusing though it is that St. Steve gets his bottom paddled here.

Chester, Flint, Flint’s girlfriend (Anna Faris) and buddies head back from livE to the wreckage of Swallow Falls with a mission to wipe out the animal-food hybrids (a cheeseburger with spidery French fry legs, shrimpanzees, susheep) that are rampaging through the place. The doomsday device? A “BS-USB” gadget.

BS. Get it? Not a lot to get. See what I mean about half-jokes? When someone says something will be a “piece of cake,” there’s a little anthropomorphic hunk of gateau sitting nearby — but that’s not actually a joke. Nor is naming a babyish strawberry “Barry.” Nor is the endless grumbling by Chester’s assistant (Kristen Schaal) that she’s an ape but not a monkey, nor Flint’s fisherman dad (James Caan) inserting the word “chum” into every third sentence, nor everyone’s stumbling over the name of Flint’s awkwardly named machine, the FLDSMDFR.

It might politely be said that the writers didn’t sweat things too much because they knew the animators are the stars. These latter do indeed take up a lot of the slack. While the characters are wandering haphazardly, killing screen time until the bad guy can get eaten by a cheeseburger, there is a rich pageant of colorfully bonkers images. It’s all playful watermelephants and deadly taco-diles and adorable little marshmallows floating in formation like ducks. Too bad sharp digital work had to be wasted on a story that’s as cutting-edge as a Commodore 64.