The story was about a reckless underdog inventor that aims to materialize food for the people of his small fishing town. His invention flies into the air, embedding itself into the atmosphere, and makes it rain food. His love interest is a junior weather girl who reports on the freak atmospheric occurrence to the rest of the world. Eventually everything goes amok, and he has to stop the weather food machine from destroying the world. He succeeds, but only after enforcing some terrible themes and illustrating some disturbing imagery.
The writing was terrible. I couldn't put my finger on any one theme. There were plenty of chances to elaborate thoughtfully on many of the atrocities that they brought up, but instead left them dangling, almost in support of them. Allow me to elaborate with a list of themes they could have went with and why they failed
- Follow you dreams. Flint was picked on at school and no one supported his dream to be a young inventor. His mother did, but she died. His father was more realistic, and wanted him to actually support himself. The social pressure makes Flint an underdog, so we are supposed to pity him. The theme failed because following his dream was a terrible decision. He invented something that ruined the town. In the end, he didn't get to follow a fabulous career, he got to live with the consequences.
- Take responsibility for your actions. Our hero invents things then sets them loose on town. The people of his town don't like him, and rightfully so. Regardless, we are supposed to feel sorry for him and allow him to make mistakes. That is probably a good message for children. They are allowed to try things and make mistakes because they are children. Flint was not a child. His decisions had massive repercussions. When he finally jumped to action, it wasn't because he had to because he caused all these problems in the first place, but because he was the hero and he was being heroic. Even when his father tried to get him to support himself, contribute to the family business, and eventually to take responsibility for his invention, Flint pouts around and the film tries to get us to take his side. The father's good parenting and appropriate responses are seen as adversarial. People who fix their own mistakes aren't heroes.
- Gluttony is bad. Food became an abundance and some people got fat. People were eating all the time, always ravenously wanting more. After all that imagery of wasted food, people eating with both hands, laying face down in a pile of food, you would think the movie would make a stronger point about the dangers of gluttony. Alas, only a few people got fat, the bad guys. Even then, they didn't get fat because they ate so much, they were just marginally more greedy than the rest of the population. Instead of making a link between gluttony and fat, they made a link between evil-ness and fat. That isn't cool.
- Avoid Waste. Uneaten food piled on the ground, and machines hauled it away. It was stored in a landfill that grew increasingly large with every passing day. After the height of the food maelstrom, the floodgates burst and the food pours over the town, destroying it. The only thing they had to do to make the point about waste was to make it disgusting. Instead it was a terrifying tidal wave of delicious snacks. People even sat amongst the food afterward happy that it was over, not disgusted at what they have done to themselves. Their waste wasn't something they dealt with because it was their own fault, it was an unavoidable affliction.
- Girls can be smart. I thought the movie was going to make a point about this with Sam. She was a beautiful ambitious weather girl, but she had a habit of saying smart things but quelling them last minute to sound more ditzy. Flint calls her out on it, but it goes to a dark place. Sam says that she was always picked on for being nerdy, so she decided to be beautiful. Flint encourages her to be 'herself' and put her hair back and wear massive eyeglasses, essentially dorking her up. Just No. The story tried to make a feminist point, but like second wave feminist tells us, women can be beautiful AND smart. CWACOM made a point of making them mutually exclusive. It would have been okay if Sam made this choice mid-movie herself but unfortunately, Flint made this decision for her. tsk-tsk-tsk.
On a side note, this movie was decidedly sexist. Not only did the movie not pass the Bechdal Test, but Sam never got to be her own person. The only change she underwent was due to men. The only thing she contributed to the movie was as a love interest, and as the one that foresees the weather crisis. This last part would have been okay, but it fell into her lap. The suitcase containing the the weather device appeared magically out of nowhere. She could have been a driving force of the movie, but they made her as passive as they could. Even when she was affecting the movie's outcome slightly by lowering Flint into the Abyss, she had a massive allergic reaction to a peanut. Flint decides to chew the rope apart so Sam wouldn't have to make the decision about allowing him to drop. This prompted one of the male characters to literally pick her up and carry her to safety. This shows that women, even when they are trying their best, are misguidedly heroic and, at the end of the day, completely ineffective
- Don't play with your food. A small point, but the movie should have at least taken a stance. Instead, the movie encouraged it, making it funny. The most disgusting thing in the entire film was when one of the men gets eaten up by a cooked chicken and pokes his head and arms through, wearing the chicken like a suit. I almost vomited. I wish some sort of negative repercussion would come out of this, but instead, it wears it for the rest of the movie like a suit of armor.
The film just had a disturbing relationship with food. The movie never said that wasn't okay. Americans sees food falling out of the sky fully formed, without any thought at all. There are people all over the world who are starving, and we are shoving our uneaten food high and out of sight. Does our population have such a low appreciation for food? Food is love, food is culture, and food is sustenance. This horrible movie stripped all of that away, and turned it into a copious monstrosity. Was I the only person that thought that this film was in poor taste? I think so. The movie got fabulous reviews. It goes to show that Americans will watch anything with good animation and a massive budget.