Book vs. Movie

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is one of my favorite childhood stories about the fictional town of Chewandswallow where it rains food. I was very excited to hear that a film adaptation of the book was being made and could not wait to see it. Many people may not have enjoyed the film as much as I have because it is very different from the book, however I believe that the movie is fun and creative and came up with the cause of the strange weather of Chewandswallow.

The book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a story within a story as the Grandfather is telling a bedtime story to his grandchildren about the town of Chewandswallow. He tells the children how pleasant life in the town was because everyone got their food from the sky and did not have to go grocery shopping or cook. However, the weather that they used to love turned against them, with the food storms becoming violent and uncontrollable with tomato tornadoes, floods of maple syrup, and giant meatballs. Eventually the town became too dangerous to live in and the citizens of Chewandswallow had to escape on boats made out of huge sandwiches and when they found a new community to live in they finally had to learn how to shop for and cook their own food.

 In the film version, it is not about the grandfather telling the story to his grandchildren but about an inventor named Flint Lockwood, who lives in a town called Swallow Falls where just about the only thing they can eat is sardines. Flint wants to prove himself to be a great scientist and inventor; so in order to bring more variety of food to the town Flint creates a machine that turns water into food. His machine accidentally shoots up into the sky and in turn starts raining down food upon the town. The townspeople and the overly greedy mayor fall in love with Flint's invention making it a success and the town a tourist destination, with the new name of Chewandswallow.

The mayor and the townspeople of Chewandswallow continue to demand that Flint create the food the desire despite the fact the machine is slowly becoming overloaded and making the food larger and increasingly dangerous. The end of the movie is similar to the book in which the food becomes too dangerous and Flint and his sidekicks, weather girl Sam Sparks and Steve the Monkey, rush to shut down the machine and everyone from Chewandswallow flee the town by making boats out of sandwiches. 

Overall, I love both the book and the movie respectively. While the book is a classic, the film adaptation is a funny, creative, and modern take on that classic that anyone will enjoy.