With Jimmy Neutron and Meet the Robinsons coming out recently, clearly the public did not need another computer-animated movie about a child-inventor…which is why they went a totally different route and made the inventor an adult that merely acts like a child. But you know what? I’ll take another kids movie about an inventor, for two reasons: 1) it encourages creative scientific solutions instead of magic (I’m looking at you, Shorts), and 2) as Torch mentioned yesterday, it isn’t a vampire movie.
We now get a CW show as well about attractive vampires in highschool...
My real beef (get it? beef as in ground beef, which makes up meatballs? yah?) with this movie is the invention itself: sure, the intentions are noble, but ending world hunger with a machine that turns water into food still has the problem that poor people in Africa without food also don’t have water. So, nice try, but no.
And yet, even without a practical purpose, even I can admit that turning water into hamburgers is freaking amazing and the inventor is a genius. Why is it that in these types of movies, the inventor has only one shot at a demonstration, and if one silly thing goes wrong everyone writes the inventor off as an idiot? Take his “hair” grower for example:
We have demonstrated proof of hair growing in previously bald areas within seconds, and yet nobody comes calling because it was a little too potent? Nobody wants to build on that, eh? Rogaine, you’re cool with a product that may work to regrow hair over a long period of time…don’t even want a sniff of this, huh? OK.
Having taken all this into account, however, the bottom line is that it’s a movie for kids. And despite the animation looking like it’s a bit on the lower end, there are a few reasons to see this movie:
1) The dude is getting chased by pizza. Anything that works that into the plot gets an A+ for creativity.
Getting chased by delicious food is like getting stalked by a hot chick...it's bad, technically, but part of you is glad it's happening, right?
2) Everything looks delicious. It may make me sound like a fatty, but watching that school get destroyed by those pancakes, with a slice of butter and some dripping syrup on top, sure made my mouth water.
3) It has more words in the title than Meatballs, therefore it must be better, and Meatballs was classic Bill Murray.
4) Bruce Campbell does the voice of the mayor, and he is flat-out awesome.
Whether it be Army of Darkness or Burn Notice, Bruce Campbell gets things done.
So yes, I will recommend seeing it.
Rating: 3 out of 4
