I went to see ‘Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs’ at the cinema today; an animation, but one that has had good reviews. After purchasing my unlimited card I had been concerned that there wouldn’t be enough on to warrant it, but the more I look, the more I see there is worth seeing. I pushed my luck a bit with the timing, by getting to the ticket counter 15 minutes after the start time (adverts would last 15-20 minutes) I was appalled to find one person running both the ticket and food counter. There were 2 separate adults at the front, followed by a woman with 4 children, and the guy was seriously faffing about. I stood there for 2 minutes, looking all the time at the ‘ticket-ripper-guy’, wondering if I could get away with showing him my pass; but I knew he would give me the company policy spiel. 5 minutes passed and I was now panicking and starting to fidget, so I made a move when I saw the ‘ticket-ripper-guy’ not standing at his post. As I got to within 10 feet of “the border” he suddenly appeared with a broom in his hand, but there was no turning back now, I just strode confidently past him as if I had just popped out for popcorn (wait a minute, I had no popcorn in my hands, okay, so a chocolate bar I had hidden). It wasn’t as if I had stolen anything, I mean, I had an unlimited pass so no money would have changed hands anyway, but that didn’t stop my heart from pounding for the first 10 minutes of the film. A decent enough film, which had lots of ideas nicked from various others such as ‘The Matrix’, ‘Revenge Of The Sith’ to an almost identitcal scene from ‘The Toughest Man In The World’ where Mr T’s character (this time Earl Devereaux) runs through a giant Dorito instead of a wall –

htp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7Q6DGOfp6k

Loved the inverted Mohican on Mr T’s character by the way.
I couldn’t help thinking about Alice in Wonderland most of the time, as it was striving to be as weird and wacky as that in many of its concepts. This film, like many I have seen recently (the last being ‘The Invention Of Lying’) was blatantly shoving current issues in our faces – in this case a child being bullied for being studious, children eating too much junk food, television only wanting dumb pretty girls, etc… The film unfortunately didn’t come close to the brilliance that was ‘The Incredibles’