In a bid to never fully develop an adult brain it is my mission to watch kids movies with just as much vigour and enthusiasm as I watch those adult ones with all the killing and the blowing up and the dog humping a guineafowl from the rear. Hmm, that last may be on my list of darknet films to never mention. Say nothing. I know where you live. All of you.
I've watched this before but a good buddy of mine liked a recent review of another kids movie and begged me to meatball it up. Not add meatballs into that previous review. I'm attempting to pithily say that they said I should write about this movie. Which is almost like a challenge. And we all know what I'm like when I'm given a challenge. Yes that's right, I stick my fingers up at people and say "Do it yourself you dictatorial fucker!"
Except on this occasion I didn't do that. Because this is a great film. It's a film that tenderly takes the piss out of disastery movies with lines that even the kids will get rather than that side of the humour being an add-on to stop parents gouging out their own eyeballs with coke spoons when forced to watch a kids film for the ninetieth time. For those of you without kids yet, that's what they do: they deliberately pick a single favourite movie and they watch it until YOU know every single line. When it happens to you pray your kids love something like 'The Lion King' or 'Toy Story' instead of 'Beauty and the Beast' or the newly re-digitised 'Steamboat Anti-Semite' from Disney's 'classic' era.
Flint is a guy, he's an inventor kid guy who grows up after the opening scenes to become an inventor young man guy whose mum died a few years after the first scenes of her encouraging his inventoriness meaning he's left with James Caan for a father and James Caan can only speak in fishing metaphors because he's emotionally subnormal. Or a typical small town American dad in other words.
Fishing? Yeah. They live on an island and sardines are their thing but no one wants them any more and one day Flint invents a machine that can transform water droplets into any kind of food people want. Yay Flint - people on the island are sick of eating all those sardines no other bastard off the island wants.
Except boo because things go wrong with the machine which become improbably lodged up in the sky inside a giant meatball. And boo because the mayor becomes the very analogy of fast food America by gorging on increasingly vast portions of food from the sky until he is the size of a very fat bastard mayor indeed. And because there was a hot chick weather reporter who came to the island to provide a love interest for Flint...I mean, to report on this amazing food from the sky malarkey but she's not so keen on him now his machine is endangering the entire world.
But she is keen on him really because Flint isn't an utter doofus and eventually saves the world from plagues of food weather. Because he's a clever inventor guy. Duh. I haven't seen the sequel but I bet he reinvents the machine with all the kinks ironed out only all the kinks aren't ironed out or the mayor comes back and messes with the un-kinked machine to make it kinky but not in a grrr, behave, ooh stop it I've got a wife and five kids back home, please put that cucumber back in the fridge sort of way.
She's Anna Faris, by the way. She's called Sam in the movie but I'm not fooled. I know she's Anna Faris. I'm an Anna fan. I'm a fAnna, you might say. Only don't say that cos now I've written it down it looks lame. Even her voice is nice. I like seeing her in the movies where she isn't a disembodied voice superimposed into the animated mouth of an animated character but when even her voice is nice it's still just as satisfying to listen to her being a cartoon person and not quite the real Anna Faris as such.
She's Anna Faris, by the way. She's called Sam in the movie but I'm not fooled. I know she's Anna Faris. I'm an Anna fan. I'm a fAnna, you might say. Only don't say that cos now I've written it down it looks lame. Even her voice is nice. I like seeing her in the movies where she isn't a disembodied voice superimposed into the animated mouth of an animated character but when even her voice is nice it's still just as satisfying to listen to her being a cartoon person and not quite the real Anna Faris as such.
Flint is someone too. In fact all of the characters are people-voices thrust into 3D animation moving figures. Clever, huh? Some of the people-voices belong to actors and actresses we've all heard of but I don't want to ruin your ability to suspend disbelief by telling you any more than the fact that one of them is Anna Faris and one is James Caan. If you really need to know, IMDB will tell you. Then it will remove pieces of your blackened heart via the medium of malware. Probably.
This probably isn't the review my buddy was hoping for but hey, have you read the reviews where I basically say I hated a film so much that I wanted to go on a killing spree? Well this isn't one of those reviews at all. Quite the opposite. This is a review in which I sort of say I love this film so much I want to go on a hugging spree. And eat a lot of lunch. So it's kind of a lugging spree. Or a hunching spree? No, neither of those. Consign them to the 'portmanteau words that really don't convey anything sensible' bin along with fAnna.
Please remember that if you eat more than one movie at a time you may become dyspeptic.
Please remember that if you eat more than one movie at a time you may become dyspeptic.
steven harris is adverse to putting his name in capitals because names aren't that important. Also, lower case is sexy. steven writes all sorts of stuff including fiction, poetry, songs, opinion pieces and shopping lists. He does not write on lavatory doors any more. his blog has writing in it and can be located at www.theplanetharris.wordpress.com He lives in Devon with an imaginary cat called Kafka.
Follow him on Twitter as @theplanetharris
Images from IMDB
Images from IMDB
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