The first Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs was a fantastic surprise that cemented the directing duo of Chris Miller and Phil Lord as comedic powerhouses, not to mention the establishment of Sony Pictures Animation as major players in the field of animated cinema. Four years later, the sequel arrives to a robust box office, but unfortunately, it’s a film that is nowhere near as clever and fun as it’s predecessor.

Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) is recruited by his childhood hero Chester V (Will Forte) to be a part of Live Corp, Chester’s uber successful company. While Flint flounders at the company, he soon gets a chance at redemption when it’s revealed that his machine (the FLDSMFDR), has begun to create food-animal hybrids.  Faster than you can say edible critters, Flint recruits his best friends to help him take down the food animals, only to soon realize that things on the island are not entirely as they seem.

This is a really odd movie to try to analyze, since it starts out so promisingly; the first 30 minutes seem to do a great job of retaining the first movies unique sense of humor, while expanding the characters in interesting ways. Tons of quotables gags (idea pants!!!) pop up, and the animation on display seems stupendous, especially Chester V whose fluid movements seem to humorously indicate he’s made out of rubber. Unfortunately, the moment the protagonists get to the island, the laughs and plotting come to a halt, as the crew seems to have no real set path for these characters to embark on, making the whole affair feel sloppy and underdeveloped.

Not helping matters is the fact there are way too many characters involved and very few of them actually get to do anything remarkable. At least the voice actors behind the characters (genuine A-listers like James Caan, Andy Samberg and Anna Farris) give it their all, despite working with an extremely poor script. To their credit, the animators have done a great job making the food-animals at least visually interesting, but none of them lend the film effective humor or emotional resonance, both factors the movie lacks in spades. Finally, the movie has one of the most poorly written third acts I’ve seen; riddled with random coincidences and an overabundance of loud chaos that seems to be covering up the obvious fact that these guys have very little idea what to do with their plot and protagonists.

It’s unfortunate that the delightful first Cloudy film has now been permanently saddled with this pitiful follow up, but alas, Sony Pictures Animation felt the need to dilute that film with this poorly done sequel.  Lacking consistent laughs and solid characters, this is one film that’s way past it’s expiration date. Yes sir, this is one rotten movie that’s pure cinematic junk food. Why, I’d; ah, enough with the food puns, you get the point. Despite all the promise it had,  Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2 trades talent and some intriguing ideas for bland and loud cinema.