Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is a 2013 sequel to the 2009 film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. It is directed by newcomers Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn who worked on the previous film, and is written by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein of Horrible Bosses fame. Phil Lord & Chris Miller also remain as executive producers.
After a quick recap of the original movie the story picks up about ten minutes after the end of the previous installment. Flint stopped the food machine at the end of the first film and saved the world from the food storm, his idol Chester V shows up to offer free clean up of the island, and Flint a job at the Live Corp Company while relocating the rest of the Swallow Falls residents for their safety. When an unknown difficulty stops Chester's plans for the island, he convinces Flint to return and destroy the FLDSMDFR. Flint's friends and family come along, and soon discover the island has changed in their absence...
The trailer can be viewed here
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Its character sheet is shared with the first movie and can be viewed here.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 provides examples of:
- All Animals Are Dogs: The Cheespider acts like a dog, despite the animal it is named after.
- Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese theme song is "Tabechaitaino" by TEMPURA KIDZ.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: All the food!
- Arc Words: FliNt LockWood.
- Armor-Piercing Question: "If Chester considers you his friend, why does he call you a monkey?"
- Ascended Fridge Horror: The idea of Spray-On Shoes as a weapon has officially been canonized. Granted, Flint only threatened to use it, but imagine if the Big Bad had gotten ahold of one of his cans...
- Baffled by Own Biology: When Brent wears extremely tight sandals, he wonders why his feet are turning purple.
- Bat Scare: The ratbird flock at the docks.
- Benevolent Monsters: Chester V draws Flint and crew to the island by warning him of the human-eating Cheespider, with its taste for Live Corp. employees and its plans for global domination, but as the heroes explore the island, it seems that almost no other species on the island poses them any threat. Indeed, Flint's dad's biggest problem is the mischief from the pickle people. It turns out that, in stark contrast to the first film, even the Cheespider is benevolent; the animals all hate Live Corp, which has evil designs for the FLDSMDFR and the unnatural wildlife.
- Berserk Button: Barb is an ape, not a monkey.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Chester V, who acts kind and well meaning to Flint, but in actuality is a Psychopathic Manchild only out for himself who tries to outright murder Flint and his friends.
- Bizarrchitecture: The Live Corp building and the Food Bar factory look like a giant lightbulb.
- Blunt "Yes": An exchange between Flint and Chester results in the following line.Flint: I should have never trusted you.
Chester: Yes, that was quite foolish. - Bring My Brown Pants: Barry drops a load of strawberry jam after being confronted with sharp tools, complete with the BS-USB he has eaten earlier.
- Chicken Brent after he was nearly eaten by the Tacodile.
- Broken Pedestal: Chester V to Flint. He was pretty much the entire reason Flint became an inventor, only to later turn on him regarding his invention.
- Call-Back: A few jokes/gags from the first movie show up again:
- Steve using his poop for something and Sam not realizing what it is until after she mistakes it for something else.
- "Holy crab-balls."
- The Remote-Controlled Television makes an appearance.
- When going off to face Chester V, Flint brings his Spray-on Shoes Spray and his Hair Unbalder.
- Ratbirds make a brief appearance.
- When Flint and his dad go fishing, Flint meekly throws the fishing rod the same way he first threw a snowball in the first movie.
- Chekhov's Gun: More than one of the inventions Flint submits to LiveCorp return later in the movie, most prominently the Party-in-a-Box, which is actually a Chekhov's Boomerang.
- Conflict Ball: The whole Sparkswoodnote vs. Livecorp debate takes a few silly turns. Having established that the FLDSMDFR is again producing dramatic weather patterns and wild, sentient food lifeforms, Sam becomes fascinated and decides to argue against turning the machine off. This would make sense if there was No Ontological Inertia (in the first film, destroying the machine merely cleared up the storm, it didn't actually unmake the food), but that has not been established, so Sam is now arguing to let the chaotic situation expand in scope. Once it becomes apparent that Flint is being manipulated into helping Chester, his admittedly dismissive line about her opinion causes not merely Sam to storm off, but for all of Sparkswood to join her, which doesn't say very much about their moral convictions on the issue, but most importantly, it leaves the ball in Chester's court, letting him make any play he wants.
- Creative Closing Credits: Just like the first film. It depicts life at the New Swallow Falls.
- Department of Redundancy Department: "The Scientifically Wonderful World Of Science".
- Devil in Plain Sight: Chester V isn't fooling anyone in the audience.
- Didn't Think This Through: Holograms are made of light, they cannot catch you during a fall.
- Disney Villain Death: Subverted. Chester V loses his footing and falls from the upper levels of his factory into his own food bar shredder... but manages to survive. That is, until he got Eaten Alive by the Cheespider.
- Dissonant Serenity: Chester V maintains the same cheerful, whimsical tone even while trying to outright murder Flint and his friends and planning what amounts to genocide.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Chester's "BS-USB", code for "This is a Hand Wave".
- Toward the beginning, Flint suggesting to Sam that they should have a place together (to work) sounds a lot like a proposal.
- Probably unintentional, but Chester's Motive Rant about how problematic it is to harvest food that can move or run away sounds a lot like making a case for veganism.
- Doppelgänger Spin: Chester uses his holograms to do this during the Final Battle. It gives Flint a lot of trouble until he uses the party-in-a-box to cover the real one in confetti.
- Dub Species Change: The Hungarian dub refers to the Shrimpanzees as Gornéla, a portmanteau of gorilla and garnéla (shrimp), therefore changing their ape half from chimps to gorillas.
- Eaten Alive: Chester's demise.
- Even the Dog Is Ashamed: Or monkey in this case. After Flint chooses to listen to Chester over his friends and drives them away, Steve ends up joining them when they are leaving the Syrup Swamp. Flint even says "Et tu, Steve?"
- Everything's Better with Rainbows: Rainbows cover the island at the end of the movie to signify that things are good again.
- Evil Counterpart: Chester V to Flint Lockwood. He and Flint share similar ideas and mindsets and both have a primate as their number two.
- Evil, Inc.: Live backwards is..?
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: The foodimals often resemble real-world animals, such as chimpanzee-like "shrimpanzees", elephant-like "watermelophants", antelope-like "cantelopes", and even giant, sauropod-like "wild scallions".
- Faux Affably Evil: Chester V starts off as Flint's idol figure, very whimsical and eccentric ...and his Evil Plan is to turn the sentient foodimals into food bars, starting by shredding Flint's friends in the grinder.
- Flanderization: Most of Flint's friends have had their personalities flattened considerably; take Earl, whose deep and abiding love for his family (which gave him most of his depth in the first movie) gets only a nod or two in the beginning before he spends the rest of the film being an Ink-Suit Bad Butt for Mr. T. Brent and Manny suffer some Flanderization as well; having lost his Chicken-armor, for example, Brent tags along for the journey but provides little to the film besides Naked People Are Funny, while Manny, who has a history in medicine, willingly abandons a cow in mid-labor.
- Food Porn: Even when it's living food, it's hard to watch it and not get hungry.
- Foreshadowing:
- When we see the Cheespider stalking the group, the camera is from a first-person perspective OF THE SPIDER. From its point of view, it is specifically targeting the bright orange Live-Corp backpacks worn by the group and does not even seem to notice the group. Wonder why? Maybe Live Corp isn't as nice as everyone thinks they are.
- Throughout the film, Flint struggles with telling the difference between Chester and his holograms, needing to touch them to figure it out. Chester exploits this in the climax, hiding among his holograms to prevent Flint from finding the remote. However, the fact that the holograms are intangible allows Flint to single out the real Chester with the Party-in-a-Box, and this same attribute prevents them from saving the real Chester from falling into the food processor.
- Early into the film, Chester hands an instrument he was playing to one of the holograms, which it of course falls through, showing that he's so used to having them for company he forgets they're not physically there.
- Friendly Tickle Torture: Flint encounters a group of living Marshmallows, which proceed to swarm and tickle him after he realizes how much the living food animals need the FLDSMDFR in order to survive.
- Fun with Acronyms: Chester presents Flint the "BS-USB", which Flint says is a "Bifurcating Systematic Universal Stop Button". Chester calls it a "buss-oosb".
- Flint later invents the "Flint Lockwood Food Jungle Topographical Pointing Machine", or FLFJTPM. It's pronounced as "Fliff-je-tep-um".
- Furry Confusion: Some of the food acts as people, some as animals, and some inanimate food makes up the landscape.
- Played with in one scene, where a seemingly inanimate giant pizza is shortly revealed to have arms and legs.
- Also done with Steven (the monkey) compared to Barb (the organutan). Although justified in that Steve is just a monkey with a translator, while Barb actually has a human brain, within her orangutan brain. Regardless, Barb is actually shown to have feelings for Steve in the after-credits scene.
- Gigantic Adults, Tiny Babies: The Tacodiles; seeing the mom interact with her children is what convinces Sam that the Foodimals aren't monsters. At the end of the movie, the Cheespider gets its own brood to care for.
- A God I Am Not: Basically what Flint tells the Foodimals when he learns that they see him as a living god called "N-Woo".
- Gondor Calls for Aid: Berry and the Pickles that Flint's father befriended summon the island's denizens to help stop Chester V.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: Chester V gets through to Flint with a Chinese "proverb". Sam sets the record straight with another Chinese "proverb".note 恶棍给的食物肯定有毒 (ègùn gěi de shíwù kěndìng yǒudú): "If a bully gives you food, it's surely poisoned."恶霸变成朋友，永远是朋友 (èbà biàn chéng péngyǒu yǒngyuǎn shì péngyǒu): "A bully turned friend will be your friend forever."
- Heel–Face Turn: Barb
- The FLDSMDFR, which survived the explosion, but reprogrammed itself to create a food ecosystem on the island instead of trying to bury the world again.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Live Corp, and especially Chester V, turn out to be this.
- Hurricane of Puns: Food Puns!
- Ignored Epiphany: While Chester mocks Flint during their final battle for his friends are making him lose, tries to turn it back on him.Flint: It's better than ending up alone like you!
Hologram-Chester: I'm not alone!
Chester: (kicks Flint in the back) I've got HOLOGRAMS! - Immediate Sequel: After the intro, it picks up right in the last scene of the first movie.
- Impossibly Cool Clothes: Chester V's orange turtle vest saves him when he is about to fall into his own fruit blender. He ping pongs around the inside of the blender for a few moments and bounces out unharmed. He can pull his head, arms, and legs, into his vest. Unfortunately for Chester V, he gets eaten by the cheese-spider shortly afterwards.
- In Case of X, Break Glass: Chester tries to divert the attacks of the sentient food with a vengeance, and he has the FLDSMDFR stored in a glass chamber. In order to break the chamber, he has to break another chamber labelled "In Case Plan Fails, Break Glass" with a hammer stored.
- It Can Think: As with the end of the first movie, the FLDSMDFR begins producing sentient food (in some cases, even sapient food). This time, however, it's managed to create several different ecosystems worth of the things, which leaves the Sparkswood and Livecorp camps at something of an impasse over how to deal with the situation. Flint ends up going with the Livecorp team.
- Just Desserts: The cheespider eats Chester V.
- Karmic Death: Chester plotted to turn the foodimals into his new food bars and serve them. Not only is he eaten alive, but the creature that does it is the cheese-spider, the same creature he originally demonized.
- It's still better than the alternative, which was getting ground up by his own food bar machine.
- Killed Off for Real: Chester V.
- Level Ate: As if being buried by a giant pile of food isn't enough, in the six months the citizens of Swallow Falls have been gone, the FLDSMDFR turns out to be Not Quite Dead and has created an entire ecosystem inhabited by living "foodimals" out of the island.
- Lighter and Softer: The FLDSMDFR's second round at operation produces highly mutated food, but rather than create chaotic weather patterns and hostile, freakish food monsters to defend it, the machine's new monsters mostly appear to be benevolent. The switch is kind of startling.
- Manipulative Bastard: Chester V.
- Monster Is a Mommy: The Tacodile (Supreme).
- Monumental Damage: Called back to and lampshaded: Chester V tells Flint that if the cheese-spiders learn to swim to the mainland, they could start attacking the world's monuments, including the one monument his food storm missed.Flint: Not Lady Liberty!
- My God, What Have I Done?: Flint when he realizes not only has Chester V been manipulating him the entire time, but that the food animals are sapient and thanks to him, Chester is poised to destroy them.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: He's an eccentric yet brilliant inventor who runs a technology corporation, plans to release the eighth version of the company's famous bar-shaped product, and wears an iconic outfit that includes a black turtleneck sweater and jeans. Chester V really resembles Steve Jobs...
- He's basically an evil version of Steve Jobs crossed with Walt Disney.
- Word Of God says that Chester V is a Steve Jobs / Richard Branson / Carl Sagan / Richard Attenborough / Walt Disney hybrid.
- No OSHA Compliance: Apparently nobody considered including any rails in Live Corp's new factory. Especially egregious considering that they are present within Live Corp's headquarters shown earlier in the film.
- Power-Up Mount: Manny gets the Tacodile, and Barry briefly rides a Bananastrich before hijacking a Sentinel of Safety.
- Pun-Based Creature: After Swallow Falls is abandoned and the FLDSMDFR left to run unchecked, the machine creates an entire ecosystem of living food items that often resemble real-world creatures, mostly with Punny Names. There are flamingo-like mangos ("flamangos"), chimpanzee-like shrimps ("shrimpanzees"), elephant-like watermelons ("watermelophants"), hippopotamus-like potatoes ("hippotatomuses") and so forth.
- Punny Name: Most if not all of the living foods' names are this. E.g. Barry the Strawberry.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Chester V turns out to be very much a Type C, sophisticated, has an extreme childish lack of morality and rationality, given his complete reliance on his Holograms for trust as well as his apathy towards the animals.
- Reactive Continuous Scream: This happens when Flint and the gang encounter a sentient strawberry. Flint screams at Barry and Barry screams along with him and it causes Sam, Earl and the others, except this dude, whose holding the video camera, to join in the chorus and no wonder they're screaming at the camera like that.
Yikes! - Record Needle Scratch: This is used during the closing credits when the "La Da Dee" song is cut-off for the black-and-white horror film "Brunch."
- Remember the New Guy?: Chester is introduced as Flint's life idol, despite never being mentioned in the previous film.
- Retcon: While it certainly wasn't a very serious ending, the credits of the first movie depicted the cast re-adapting to life on Swallow Falls, including a variety of life-snippets like Flint going to work with his dad by using his spray-on shoes invention as a roof sealant. Cloudy 2 begins less than ten minutes after Flint and company save the world from the FLDSMDFR, effectively blowing all of that out of the water... which also suggests that the Swallow Falls' mayor did not survive and was left to drown offscreen while the islanders meet Chester.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Barry the strawberry. Some of the other foodimals would qualify, but taken up to eleven with the marshmallows.
- Running Gag: "There's a leek in the boat!"
- Flint's nose getting caught in the Live Corp elevators.
- Spit Out a Shoe: After the Cheespider eats Chester, it spits out his vest, which deflates.
- Sdrawkcab Name Live Corp -> Evil Corp
- Series Continuity Error: at least 2:
- Flint, despite pronouncing the name of the FLDSMDFR perfectly and berating others for failing to do so in the first film, now pronounces it incorrectly many times, sounding closer to FLDSDFOMNR.
- Similarly, another cross-film error occurs when they find Flint's lab. In the first film it was crushed, knocked over, and filled with food. When it is found here, it is not only empty of food and full of water without any visible holes, but is up high, with the transport tube between the lab and toilet reconnected.
- Shadow Archetype: Chester V to Flint. He's a brilliant inventor with a primate side-kick and an goofy personality, but unlike Flint is a total Sociopath who cares for no one but himself and is willing to outright murder people to get what he wants. Looking at Flint's ego trip in the original film, Chester V comes off as what Flint would have if he hadn't seen the light.
- Shout-Out: From the Creative Closing Credits- The Late Chow With Cornan.
- Our heroes' discovery of the foodimals feels very similar to Jurassic Park(Sam is even wearing an outfit paying homage to Ellie Sattler), and the found footage of the Live-Corp employees being attacked by a cheese-spider looks like an Apocalyptic Log from a horror film.
- The boat's approach to the island looks a lot like a similar scene from King Kong (2005), except with giant pie wedges, toast, and bananas instead of rocks carved like ape faces.
- Also the scene where Flint lectures the foodimals with Barry translating looks a whole lot like a similar scene in Avatar
- When Flint discovers where the FLDSMDFR is, he realizes it's in "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" which is a folk song from the late 1920s.
- Sixth Ranger: Barb ultimately sides with Flint and company after one too many insults from Chester.
- Ship Tease: Barb and Steve throughout the credits, culminating in her asking him out in The Stinger.
- Single Tear:
- Subverted and later played straight by Earl Devereaux. He begins to shed a single manly tear, but orders it back into his tear duct. He later gives the tear permission to come out.
- Manny also sheds a single tear before getting attacked and frozen.
- Squishy Wizard: Chester V gives Flint a lot of trouble with his holograms, but once Flint manages to find the real one, all it takes is one good punch to take him down.
- Spontaneous Mustache: the protagonists are forced to temporarily move to a different city while their homes at Swallow Falls are completely covered with oversized food. Earl Devereaux - a badass Mr. T stand-in - has to shave his beard and change his job from a policeman to a vendor at a candy shop during this time. However, when it's time to go back to Swallow Falls and try to get their home back, Earl immediately gets back into his policeman outfit, and instantly regrows his beard by merely squinting his eyes.
- Storefront Television Display: After losing and humiliating himself at the Vesting Ceremony, Flint walks home and gets the idea to call Sam after seeing one of her weather broadcasts on a TV display. As he leaves a message, the TVs cut to a breaking news bulletin of Flint's humiliation at the ceremony, causing him to sigh and walk the rest of the way home
- Tears of Awe: Played with when Earl sees the foodimals for the first time.Earl: It's enough to make a grown man cry. But not this man! Get back in there, tear! (sucks the Single Tear back into his eye)
- Thank the Maker: The food animals turn out to treat Flint like this due to Remote-Controlled Television showing recordings of him creating the machine that made them.
- The Dog Bites Back: After Chester V gets his royal butt kicked and surrounded by the various foods, he grabs the Food Machine and flees to high ground. Barb flies by and Chester V screams out "SAVE ME MONKEY!" Barb, tired of being mistaken for a MONKEY when she's clearly an Ape, instead takes the Food Machine away from Chester V and leaves him to be eaten by the cheespider.
- The Sociopath: Chester V. He's charismatic and very manipulative, but lacks any sense of morality and doesn't care who or what he's hurting to get what he wants.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- As it turns out, constantly abusing your employee by refusing to refer to her by her proper species is a one way guarantee of losing her loyalty and interesting in helping you, Chester V.
- And as it also turns out, while holograms might certainly be designed to be devoted to you, they're still only holograms. They can't provide any true emotional closeness or affection, and because they're not tangible, physical objects can still fall straight through them. This proves to be Chester V's downfall, as while their lack of tangibility makes them impossible for Flint to harm, they also aren't affected by the Party in a Box's physical elements, unlike the real Chester V. And when he finds himself falling into his giant grinder, he tries to save himself with his holograms...only to fall straight through them.
- The Stinger: Barb drags Steve off on a date.
- The Team: Flint is The Leader as he takes on the leadership role when they get to the island and is the one who rounds up the others to come with him. The Big Guy as he is the manliest, tallest, toughest and most muscular of the group and usually the first one get physical. Brent and Steve are the Plucky Comic Relief characters as they provide a good chunk of the movie's more humorous moments. Manny is The Smart Guy the calm, level-headed and savvy variety. Sam is The Heart as she is the most supportive one of the group, the one most excited at the thought of them working together and the one who has to remind Flint who his real friends and companions are when Chester V tries to trick him into believing other wise. She has also shown to be a nurturing caretaker for Berry.
- They Were Holding You Back: Through the movie, the Big Bad tries to drive a wedge between Flint and his friends and family.
- Unequal Rites: Science version. At one point, Barb and Sam clash over how to respond to Barry, and Barb snidely asks Sam if she's a scientist. Sam points out that she's a meteorologist and Barb continues to be snide by taking jabs at meteorology, where you do nothing more than look pretty and point at a map.note Chester breaks up the squabble, but takes the opportunity to suggest that Barb's the real scientist.
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Maintains the goofy and colorful tone of the original movie, but Chester V tries repeatedly to kill off Flint and the group in messy ways and his plan is to turn the food-animal hybrids, which are clearly alive and to some degree sapient, into food bars via a gruesome looking grinder, all of which is played straight.
- Wedgie: Flint mentions having invented wedgie-proof underpants.
- Wham Shot:
- Manny realises the Foodimals know something they don't, and switches LiveCorp's logo around to spell "Evil".
- The television on legs coming back and showing glitchy footage of Flint's demonstration of the FLDSMDFR, showing Flint saying "Ennn...Woooo...", revealing that the "Enwoo" the Foodimals refer to is Flint, as a benevolent creator type.
- World of Pun: They get a lot of mileage out of the food-animal hybrids (themselves called "foodimals"). Shrimpanzee, mosquitoast, jellyfish, tacodile (SUPREME!), watermelephants, Hippotatomus, bananostriches, kiwi... It's pretty much Sony giving us an hour and a half worth of food puns. Most combos clearly picked for the name, rather than any connection between the food and animal. (Shrimpanzees are especially weird, as shrimp are already animals.) As Flint says, "It's best we don't think about it too much."
- Subverted for comic effect with the tomato—it's just a tomato.
- You Monster!: Sam to Chester V when he reveals his plan to grind the food-animals into food bars.
- You Said You Would Let Them Go: In the climax, Chester V demands Flint drop his "attack cans" or his friend will be dropped in the shredder. After Flint gives in, Chester V responds, "I changed my mind," and decides to kill all of them anyway.Chester V: Please understand, I can't leave any witnesses.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once Chester V acquires the FLDSMDFR, he tries to kill Flint by pushing him off a cliff, saying he no longer needs him.
