258. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (01)

Title: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (01)
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Family
Year: 2009

Summary: Flint Lockwood always wanted to invent something great. Despite his creativity and zealous enthusiasm, his inventions, including spray on shoes, a remote controlled television, rat birds, hair-un-balder, and a flying car, all end in failure. Flint lives in Swallow Falls, a tiny fictional town in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, with Tim, his widowed technophobic father who misunderstands his son's talent. The town's only source of revenue is the Baby Brent Sardine cannery that has closed down, leaving the town only sardines for nourishment.

Along with the aid of his pet monkey, Steve, Flint invents a machine that transforms water into food, called the "Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator" (FLDSMDFR for short). Flint turns on the FLDSMDFR in his laboratory, but ends up short circuiting the house. He decided to power the machine by hooking it up to the nearby power plant. When he turns the machine back on it ends up rocketing through town, destroying the newly opened tourist attraction Sardine Land, and shooting up into the stratosphere. While recuperating from his failure, he meets Samantha "Sam" Sparks, a weather intern whose big break was foiled by Flint's actions. Their conversation is cut short when rainbow colored clouds float over the town and begin to rain cheeseburgers.

Realizing the potential for the FLDSMDFR, Flint creates a communication device to send orders to the machine and order it to create different types of food. Swallow Falls (now renamed Chewandswallow) becomes a "food tourism" destination and attracts many tourists. Everything is going well until the townsfolk start greedily requesting food from Flint's machine. Flint notices that the food is beginning to grow larger in size. Although he is concerned that the food is starting to "over mutate," the Mayor (now morbidly obese and having to move with a scooter) sees it as a better outcome for him and the city and guilts Flint into continuing to making food rain for the city.

Citizens and worldly tourists in Chewandswallow are blissful until suddenly a large destructive tomato-tornado formed of spaghetti and meatballs threatens the town. Flint rushes to his lab to turn the FLDSMDFR off and attempts to send a 'kill code' to stop the machine, but the Mayor throws a large radish and destroys the communication device before the code is sent. A shocked Mayor then tells Flint that he ordered a Las Vegas style all-you-can-eat buffet, before fleeing in fear. With Flint unable to control the machine, a massive food storm is created that threatens the world. However, his father encourages him to fix the mess. Flint gains self-confidence, builds a new flying car, and places the kill code in a USB flash drive. Flint, Sam, her cameraman, Manny, Steve and Brent set out to deactivate the FLDSMDFR. As they approach, they find that the machine is now the core of a giant meatball, where clouds go in the top and a food hurricane goes out the bottom which sends sentient food to attack them. In the chaos, one of the windows on the flying car breaks causing Flint to lose the kill code when the flash drive is sucked out the window.

Back at Chewandswallow, the citizens and tourists, with the help of Earl, escape. Mt. Leftovers collapses, causing an avalanche of food—a foodalanche—to destroy Chewandswallow. The foodalanche covers Flint's Lab while Tim is still attempting to send the kill code to Flint's cell phone. Tim survives the foodalanche and is able to send the kill code to Flint. Flint goes inside the meatball, finds the machine, and jams the phone into the USB port. To his frustration, Flint discovers that Tim sent him the wrong document and he is unable to stop the FLDSMDFR. Flint manages to use his Spray-On Shoes formula on the machine and causes it to explode. With the machine destroyed the food storm subsides and everyone on the meatball is able to return safely to Chewandswallow. Tim finally shows his appreciation for his son and his inventions before Flint and Sam celebrate with a kiss. Meanwhile, as a comeuppance for his actions, the obese mayor is stranded in the middle of the sea, having eaten nearly all of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich boat, while muttering that his plans were not well thought out.

During the credits, there is traditional animation of the characters which even includes a part where Mayor Shelbourne has been slendered down and arrested by Officer Devereaux.