BEFORE: While I'm in the process of figuring out which foods I can now eat with impunity, and which make my colon do flip-flops, I've bought a bunch of those little frozen low-calorie meals to eat at the office, instead of eating take-out. I suppose this was inevitable, with my office located between a great NY deli, a couple of gourmet burger shops, and a southern BBQ restaurant that's right in the same building, for chrissakes. Add to that my love of Chinese buffets and the occasional beer/food festival, it's not hard to see how I got this way. Perhaps I should document my new, less-evil low-calorie meals here as an incentive to stay on the righteous path - last night I had an under-200 calorie meal of lemon chicken, with some rice and broccoli, and I managed to avoid snacking on Easter candy.
Linking from "Despicable Me", Jason Segel was also in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", which also featured Bill Hader (last seen in "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"), who voices tonight's main character. And I've kicked off what I'm calling "Mad Science" week, this will become somewhat self-explanatory.
THE PLOT: Inspired by the beloved children's book, the film focuses on a town where food falls from the sky like rain.
AFTER: Hmm, I never read the book this is based on - must have been after my time, which is why I didn't include this in my children's lit chain a month or so ago. So I'm just going to treat this as a wildly inventive animated film.
However, I did encounter the film's directors, Chris Miller and Phil Lord, about a decade ago when they were working for animation companies in New York - I think Chris had an internship at a studio I work for, and he and Phil had this crazy dream to move out to L.A. and make animated films. Looks like they made it happen.
But as I stated yesterday - animation is the best medium for a story like this, because there really are no limits as to what you can put on the screen. As long as someone can think of it, it can be drawn or pixellated into an animated film. Here there's a lot of giant food falling from the sky, in quantities that would be impossible to recreate on a live-action set. Then again, I've seen the craft tables for Hollywood films...
This film centers on an inventor who fails at nearly everything he tries (seems to be another running theme for this week) and whose inventions keep ruining the small island he lives on, which has a sardine-based economy. But his machine that turns water into food manages to work, and it gets installed in the heavens over the island, where it starts to rain food - food that's much tastier than sardines, one assumes.
An aspiring young weather-girl (is that the PC term?) is sent to report on the story, and at first this just leads to a lot of on-air food-based puns (a rain of burgers is a "meatier" shower, nice) but as the requests for more interesting food-based precipitations get more outlandish, something goes haywire with the machine, and giant mutated food starts to overrun the island.
While anyone can spot the romance-amid-disaster plotline coming a mile away, there are plenty of unpredictable events here as the scientist, along with a ragtag bunch of carelessly selected townspeople, has to find a way to get into the sky and shut down his out-of-control creation.
I guess this works best if you don't think too much about it, like about how food falling like rain would be a pretty inefficient delivery system (they sort of point this out on giant-steak day) and most of it would probably fall on the ground (no mention of the 5-second rule?). Something like this would solve world hunger, but of course could also lead to overeating, which they do point out in the film after some of the characters over-indulge.
The funny thing about the United States - we might be the only country where both childhood hunger and childhood obesity are constant problems. You often see news stories about both - how can this be? What we really have is not just a class struggle, it's a distribution problem. Some people have too much food, and others have not enough. What the government really should be doing is taking food away from the rich, fat people and giving it to the poor, skinny ones. Just a thought.
Also starring the voices of Anna Faris (last seen in "Yogi Bear"), James Caan (last seen in "Thief"), Andy Samberg (last seen in "I Love You, Man"), Bruce Campbell (last heard in "Cars 2"), Mr. T (last seen in "Freaked"), Neil Patrick Harris (last heard in "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore"), with cameos from Benjamin Bratt, Al Roker, Lauren Graham and Will Forte (last seen in "MacGruber").
RATING: 7 out of 10 rat-birds
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