Diesel Bombers - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs- Pixar better beware

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was my unequivocally favorite book back in Mr. Tippet's second grade class, when I had a crush on Anna-Leigh Sanchez and was busy coaxing myself to sleep amidst brutally hardcore masochistic fantasies. So I was surprised to see that it was the inspiration for an animated movie and took my ex-fiancee to see it tonight.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the most creative film of the year and one of the best made.

Compared with Pixar's offerings, Meatballs is less high-browed; instead of finding originality in allegory or metaphor like Up or WALL-E, it focuses its creativity on its premise and details. The result is a film that won't leave one pondering afterwards, but is more viscerally entertaining, without drowning in the superficial.

Meatballs is to absurdist humor what WALL-E was to slapstick, which is a honorful echo of its source material and goes much deeper than the several visual images lifted from the book (the school being crushed with the pancake and the man with the noodle on his head). The film uses running throw-away jokes to support its bizarre premise; between the ratbirds, automatic television and self-parodying narration no opportunities are missed to compound the humor of a food-falling-from-the-sky disaster movie, and each gag accelerates the flow of the film rather than resets the comedic timing. The laughs aren't overtly silly or Dennis Miller-esque esoteric; they're absurd and original while being just subtle enough to not be didactic or distracting. The writers of Family Guy could take many notes on the masterful use absurdist plotting and non-sequiturs.

The animation is not on the same technical level as Pixar's, but the animators here use the medium to enhance action and visuals beyond anything Pixar has done. With every absurd bulge or stretch of the characters or foodstuffs the art makes it clear that this is a story that must be told with this animation, which is all the more an amazing feat because these images are adapted from a children's book. Pixar and Dreamworks have previously used computer animation to impress through the natural appeal of the medium; this is the first film to thrive in and utilize the medium throughout.

Meatballs can't touch WALL-E's universally original inspired and resonant masterwork. But compared to the Toy Story's, the Ice Age's or the Shrek's it is more entertaining and much more at peace with itself. It's very rare for a film to achieve the same complimentary tone in premise, details, animation and plot; here it is done very well. For a similarly well-made movie currently in the theaters we'd have to talk about Inglourious Basterds.