One of the more recent book to movie translations was based on a children’s book that almost has nothing to do with the movie, and so, today we’re talking Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

Featuring Flint Lockwood, strange shut-in tinkerer who’s been living with his parents his entire life, and has been working out of a treehouse in the backyard that’s been steadily growing over the years, Flint’s made a lot of strange inventions.  Strange  like the monkey thought translator that doesn’t seem to work very well as monkeys don’t think in complex terms, and the spray-on shoe substance he encased his feet in at the age of five or so and hasn’t been able to extract his feet from to this very day.

But apparently, they DO expand to fit growing feet.

Okay, let’s all walk carefully around that plot hole (well, he could’ve sold the stuff as a new kind of impenetrable armor–the government contracts ALONE would have…okay, around THAT plot hole too) and on into the plot.  Flint’s about to test his newest invention, against pretty much everybody’s wishes–a device that converts water into food by means of radiation.  Much to everyone’s amazement, the device works.  And when a New York weathergirl whose primary qualification seems to be that she’s perky (until later when we discover what she really is) arrives in town to cover the opening of a sardine themed amusement park, Flint’s invention, we discover, works…but entirely too well.

First off, geeks in the audience–you must own a copy of this film.  It will give you hope.  Seriously, pretty much every closet geek in the audience is secretly wishing something like this would happen, and for the geekish ladies in the audience, know this–the only thing stopping the nerdy boys from hitting on you is their paralyzing fear of botching the job, so feel free to grab one.  They will enjoy it.

This movie is pretty much geek heaven.  Between Flint and the weathergirl and the surprise appearance of both World of Warcraft pitchman Mr. T and the man himself Bruce Campbell doing voice work and that strange viral video Flint had of a cat rapping “Fight the power”, most likely a reference to classic 4Chan’s “Row Row Fight the Power”, there’s so much in here for the geek crowd it’s not even funny.

This bears almost no resemblance to the book on which it is based.  Rest assured of that much. So literary wonks, you will be hugely disappointed, but chances are most of you are geeks anyway so it all works out in the end.  There will also be, as I’ve said, loads of plot holes that the simplistic plot just spawns like crazy (indestructible spray-on shoes, did it have to rain food ALL THE TIME?, and so on) but these can be overlooked in the midst of the geekgasm this movie brings to the plate.

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is a great movie for both geeks and future geeks, so the Screenhead Ten Scale and I both join in the geek love and hand this flawed pandering parade a seven out of ten.