‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2’ Serves Up Healthy, Fun Life Lessons

If you come across a tasty dish, chances are you will go back for seconds.

The creators of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs had the same idea in mind with their sequel to the 2009 surprise hit animated film. That movie—based on Judi Barrett’s 1978 children’s book of the same title—focused on a town where food, “manna from heaven,” falls from the sky like rain, thanks to inventor Flint Lockwood’s (voiced by Bill Hader) genius.

After the disastrous food storm in the first film, Flint and his friends are forced to leave the town. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 picks up where the original Sony Pictures Animation’s comedy left off. Flint accepts the invitation from his idol Chester V (Will Forte) to join the Live Corp Company, which has been tasked with cleaning the island and where the best inventors in the world create technologies for the betterment of mankind—or so it seems.

It’s always been Flint’s dream to be recognized as a great inventor, but everything changes when he discovers his most infamous machine (which turns water into food) is still operating and is now creating food-animal hybrids—“foodimals.” With the fate of humanity in his hands, Chester sends Flint and his friends on a dangerously delicious mission to Swallow Falls to battle hungry tacodiles, shrimpanzees, hippotatomuses, cheespiders, apple pie-thons and other food creatures to save the world again.

Rated PG, the movie—like its predecessor—is surprisingly clean of foul language or double entendres. Christian parents will appreciate its positive life lessons on choosing friendship over success no matter the cost.

“Flint needed his friends in the end,” explains Caden, 10, one of several youngsters who attended the movie screening. “The movie had a good lesson on ‘Don’t be deceived.’”

Far from a faith-based film, the movie offers a spiritual nugget regarding idol worship. When the foodimals try to worship Flint for creating them, he tells the food-animal hybrids that he is just a man, echoing Peter when he visits Cornelius’ house in Acts 10.

It may not be a picnic saving the world in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, but the family-friendly movie will have adults and children enjoying leftovers.

Content Watch: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is rated PG for mild rude humor, but it should be suitable for most young children. Earl Devereaux (Terry Crews, who replaced Mr. T for the sequel), says, “Stand back; I’m gonna cut the cheese” when they come across a lair made of cheese web. Steve the monkey (Neil Patrick Harris) reportedly finds a “brown crayon” in leaving a mark on the floor. Chester’s right-hand-gal is Barb (Kristen Schaal), a highly evolved orangutan with a human brain, but the evolution talk is left out.