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| Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013) Sony Pictures Animation |
I apologize for not writing this past weekend, but I wasn’t sure
if I wanted to post about this one because of its possible political nature. I
decided to not worry about it and post it anyway.
During the course of watching this movie I noticed that the
themes of the film had a great deal of social commentary, which is odd for a children’s
movie. You can tell that this sequel was even made for a younger audience than
its predecessor.
Unlike Pixar movies that usually have great themes this
movie really falls short when it comes to the plot line. I know it’s just a kid’s
movie, but it asks questions that many adults have not been able to answer for
themselves.
Here is the problem:
If you created a machine that made food out of water, wouldn’t
you use it to solve the problem of world hunger? Well at the end of the first film
they had to destroy the FLDSMDFR machine because it was making sentient food.
In this film the machine miraculously stays on and continues its work of
creating sentient food with no power source and uses vines for cables.
Later on you find out that there is a company known for its
scientific achievements (Google) that comes to the aid of the town. It offers
to relocate everyone to San Fran Jose (might as well be google headquarters) in
order to clean up the town for free so that people can rebuild their homes
(evil right?). They also were able to create a zero emission car that runs on “cute.”
(The reason I call the company Google is because they are
based in the same area as google, they have a similar looking facility, they
give out free beverages just like google does, and they bring in the best
talent all over the world.)
The people willingly leave their home on the island, but the
cache is that the leader of the company (looks like Steve Jobs and steals
inventions too) just wants to use the machine to make a better food bar product
they sale. The food bar contains all the nutrition you would need for one meal
and could potentially feed the world if they could bring the cost down. Now
that they can make food out of water, that would be a real possibility.
The hippies are the only ones that can see the food as
wildlife and is a group made up of a fisherman, police officer, Spanish camera
man, meteorologist, chicken salesmen/bully, and a scientist. The main inventor
decides to turn off the machine to make sure that it doesn’t create any harmful
food that would be dangerous to humans. The meteorologist points out that the
machine has created life and that we shouldn’t use its creations as food because
they have feelings and conscience. The underlying theme becomes a vegetarian argument
for not eating animals even if they are in a farm system.
I don’t mind vegetarians or their arguments about animal
cruelty, but I disagree with the notion that animals are more important than
people. If it comes down to it I would rather feed people than keep an overpopulated
amount of sentient fruit and taco monsters. Just like real wildlife they can be
dangerous depending on the situation, but can also be docile as well.
It’s important to note that these creatures can be dangerous
for humans and that there is not much known about the creatures. Their
ecosystem is not really explained either. Their population also grows at a rate
that would render humans extinct if they reached mainland. The hippies want to
ignore all the dangers of these unknown species and have no vision to the
future about what their existence could mean.
The evil company wants to use the new food source to feed
the world with better tasting food bars that are also more nutritional. I don’t
think they should’ve killed the sentient food. I wish they would’ve just
reprogrammed the machine to make regular food and keep it more under control. This
way they would eventually be able to harness a new food source for the entire
planet.
Obviously the point of this film is not about the issues I
have mentioned, but it is fun to think about the logistics of this new race of
food.
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