Food, Glorious Food

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It might well be every child's dream: a town in which delicious food falls from the sky in abundance. For the children of Swallow Falls – and its adults – this dream seems impossible. Since the collapse of the sardine market, the town has mountains of the fish. Every meal is a portion of it; the only variety is in its presentation.

One resident of Swallow Falls is determined to change this. Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) has been inventing since he was a child. His early creations included spray-on shoes, which provoked the ridicule of his classmates. He wanted to run away that day, but, as he says, 'you can't run away from your own feet’. But now Flint has a new invention in mind, something that will transform the small town: a machine that turns water into food. Will his invention endear him to the other townspeople? And will it convince his father, Tim (James Caan), that inventing is a worthwhile pursuit?

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is inspired by a children's book of the same name by Judi and Ron Barrett. It tells the story of a town called Chewandswallow, also afflicted by a deluge of giant food from the sky. The film's directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, decided to add to this tasty tale and tell the story of how the food storm began, with our inventor Flint. In so doing, they crafted what was then the largest computer-animated set ever used in film, and overcame a number of other technical challenges, particularly animating swirling storms of food. Lord and Miller say they wanted to make the food look as appetising as possible, and their attention to detail certainly comes through in the film. Cloudy has been well-received by critics, and has been nominated for a number of awards, including a Critics' Choice Award and a Golden Globe.

Flint Lockwood loves to invent. From an early age he was fascinated by great inventors like Edison and Tesla, and he longs to be recognised alongside them. His father, however, hopes he will give up inventing and join him in the family business, a bait and tackle shop. He has always found communicating with his son difficult, and it becomes clear quite quickly how much Flint wants his dad to be proud of him. In fact, this is one of the reasons Flint invents: so he will be accepted by others. This is a well-worn path for films like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, but it says a great deal that it still feels as relevant and appropriate as it does here. Many children – and adults – will be able to relate to Flint's experience.

The town's ambitious leader, Mayor Shelbourne (Bruce Campbell), has a plan to revive its ailing fortunes. Capitalising on the town's sardine heritage, he hopes to attract visitors to the island with Sardineland, an entire amusement park dedicated to the fish. On the same day, Flint accidentally launches his latest invention, his FLDSMDFR, the machine to turn water into food. Pumping too much power into the machine, it flies through the town, out of control, taking down Sardineland and launching itself into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Weather News Network send an intern to report on events on the island, which usually features few meteorological phenomena. This is the first assignment for Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), and she dives into reporting Sardineland's opening as enthusiastically as she can. Flint’s machine ruins the ceremony, but it becomes a massive scoop for Sam. She finds Flint and is fascinated by his inventions: his monkey translator, his spray-on shoes (to solve the tripping epidemic caused by untied laces), even some rat-birds, but particularly the FLDSMDFR. She's excited, but not just because of the story. She understands how it works, and seems to share Flint's passion for quirky inventions. We quickly see that she's not keen to share this with the world, however, and that she pretends to be much less intelligent to fit in. Like Flint, Sam is searching for approval, but where Flint has embraced being ‘a nerd’, Sam has tried the opposite approach: hiding her real character in order to fit in at school and now at work.

Flint's machine gives them both an opportunity to change. Flint nervously asks Sam out, and he takes her just outside the town where he's made a giant castle from her favourite food, Jell-O. They have great fun bouncing around inside, playing a piano, chomping chunks from imitation statues and diving into the swimming pool. But there is a revealing moment for Sam when Flint challenges her about why she says ‘something super smart’, then tries to hide behind a superficial comment. She replies, ‘I too used to be a nerd’. Flint is shocked. ‘Too?’ he asks. But he urges her to put her glasses back on and he crafts her a scrunchy from the Jell-O. ‘You looked OK before,’ he says, ‘but now you're beautiful’. Flint, unlike many others, accepts Sam for who she really is and feels most comfortable being. We see that it's not easy for her afterwards, though, and Weather News Network anchor Patrick Patrickson (Al Roker) isn't a fan of her new look. It's a situation that many of us may have experienced, either at school or work. But where we only judge other people by outward appearances, the Bible teaches that God looks into the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and sees who we really are.

The free food which is falling from the sky is wildly popular with the townspeople of Swallow Falls, and Flint becomes a local celebrity. He works hard to meet everyone's requests for their favourite food, and is transformed from somebody ridiculed by kids to someone welcome at the town's most classy restaurants. Flint is more popular than he ever has been, but he is so taken by his fame that he turns his back on the two people closest to him, his father and Sam.

In Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Flint and Sam both have to decide where to find their identity. As we've seen, Flint's search for identity led him to seek approval from his father, and, when that didn't come, he found fame with a fickle public, with disastrous results. Sam felt compelled to look and talk like others around her in order to fit in and avoid bullying. Children and adults are likely to face each of these situations and struggle with how to respond. In Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Flint and Sam are rewarded for sticking to an identity that they ultimately determine themselves, one that isn't being forced from outside.

This is a positive message for anyone watching this film, in a culture where often we are encouraged to find our value through others. This can come explicitly, through advertising which encourages us to buy products that will increase our popularity, or it can be implicit, hidden in the ways our friends and family expect us to behave or achieve. Set against this, it’s good to find our own value because it encourages us not to hide our interests or aspects of our character for the sake of fitting in. But finding our value in this way is almost always connected to feeling or emotion, which fluctuates, depending on our mood or circumstances. The Bible, however, shows us a third way of valuing ourselves: what God thinks of us. As people he has created, each of us is supremely valuable to him even though he knows what we’re really like inside. This is demonstrated most fully in Jesus's crucifixion, because he was willing to give up his own life to win ours. How does that compare to the way we value ourselves?

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