So I just thought of this randomly a second before I started typing up this post—I think this may be the first animated sequel I’ve seen in a while where there wasn’t a secondary title after the ‘2’?  Maybe they thought Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was a long enough title that they didn’t need a creative, cheesy additional one.

Anyway, I was totally expecting this to be as horrible as I thought the first one was, but this actually had me laughing quite a bit.  I am happy to say that all the “good parts” were not revealed in the trailers.  At least, not the ones I saw for this one.

If you buy your tickets now through Fandango, they’ll give you an iTunes promo code where you can download the first movie for free.  The code expires sometime in November; I can’t remember all the fine print off the top of my head.  Anyway, for parents who want to buy a copy of the first one for their kids and haven’t done so yet, this might be a good opportunity for you.

I was totally expecting the entire movie to just be witty one-liners, but luckily it wasn’t that bad of a cringe-fest.  My favorite part had to be the cute little strawberry character, which if I were a kid again, I’d probably beg my parents to go and hunt down a plushie version of it that I have no doubt some toy-maker out there has probably mass-produced already.

The story is predictable and the visuals are colorful, but what more can one really expect from a children’s movie?  Good news for the parents—the adults in the theater I was in the day I watched this were laughing about as hard as the kids were, so this one shouldn’t feel like a pain to take the kids to.

FINAL VERDICT: C+

My only quip with this movie was for an hour and 30-some minute movie, it sure started to feel long after a point.  Maybe it was because I watched this with a friend after a super long day of work, so I was already mentally spent at that point, but my attention span didn’t begin to waver until probably the last fifteen minutes of the movie.   Usually I stick around for a few minutes to watch the animated end-credits, but I was just way too tired that night—I went straight home and to bed!  Oh, the joys of getting older.  Hahaha.