Bumbling inventor-wannabe Flint Lockwood has big dreams of improving the quality of life for the citizens of his small hometown, which is a forgotten island in the middle of nowhere that is literally surviving on sardines. Gross. He invents spray-on shoes, but he can't invent a way to get them off. He invents spray-on hair, but his dad ends up looking like a Sasquatch. Despite his best efforts, he just can't get anything right. Then his mom dies, he hits puberty, his dad considers him a failure—his life basically goes to shit. Well isn't that wonderful.

But then, one of his typical mistakes ends up making him a star.

After another experiment goes monumentally awry, Lockwood's latest invention—a machine that turns water into food—ends up in the sky high above the little island. Then it starts raining cheeseburgers. Everyone in the town is ecstatic to finally get to eat something that isn't a small, greasy fish, and Lockwood becomes the hometown hero.

But, just as you'd expect, the adoration doesn't last long. In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (based on the children's book of the same name), the moral of the story isn't that fucking up can make you famous (even though it can); the ultimate message is that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Not only does the town's greedy mayor end up morbidly obese (too big, even, for his little motorized scooter), but the slowly mutating food gets bigger and bigger and eventually threatens to destroy the island and everyone on it. Of course, the greedy fucks deserve to die, but since this is a kids' movie, everyone lives and things work out in the end. Sigh. Those kids' movies—so cute, but so predictable.