Editor’s Note: This review was written and published way back in 2010.
I recently watched and reviewed the Spike Jonze film Where The Wild Things Are, and thought I’d hit the other film made from a beloved children’s book that was released in the fall of 2009: Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs.
The films were released a month apart – Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs hit theaters in mid-September, and Where The Wild Things Are opened in mid-October – and both had an estimated budget of $100 million dollars to work with. And that’s where the similarities end.
Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs was brought to life by the writer/director team Phil Lord and Chris Miller, whose only previous work was a short-lived cartoon called “Clone High” (they have since signed to write and direct the 2012 big screen adaptation of 21 Jumpstreet). And brought it to life they did, in wonderful fashion. A wacky sense of humor fills the movie from beginning to end. The cast of voice actors, which included James Caan, Anna Faris, Bruce Campbell and Mr. T, bring their characters to life with warmth and personality. It’s a silly movie, of course, but one that engages adult audiences as well as it does for children.
While watching Where The Wild Things Are, I realized a general lack of purpose to the film – it doesn’t do anything, go anywhere, grow its characters any. Yet the book is 48 pages long, giving Jonze and his team 16 pages more content to work with than the Miller/Lord team had for Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. During its theatrical run, Cloudy took in more than $235 million, more than twice its original budget, while Wild Things barely made back its money. This tells me that I’m not the only one who prefers great characters and the fine art of storytelling over a movie that just “looks pretty”.
