What goes into making a successful animation or film? There’s story, characters, entertainment value, emotion, and a slew of other qualities. But the one of the most important qualities is believability. A successful film will create a world, whether realistic or cartoonish, where an audience can watch the film without questioning its plausibility. And believable physics is essential in creating a believable film. Without believable physics, it takes the audience away from the story, characters, and everything else mentioned before. As an animators we have the opportunity to push physics to wherever we want, as long as the audience believes in “our” physics.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 [Cloudy 2], has Flint Lockwood return as the main protagonist with his companions: Sam Sparks, Officer Earl, Chicken Brent, Manny, and Tim Lockwood. After having covered his hometown in giant mutations of various foods from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs with his “Fldsmdfr”, he and the rest of the citizens of Swallow Falls take refuge in SanFran Jose California with the help of Chester V. Flint later returns to Swallow Falls with his crew to save Swallow Falls and the rest of the world from impending doom. There they find that the food mutations have evolved into sentient lifeforms. And so begins their journey through this new Swallow Falls. Directed by Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn, in the animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, they push the physical limits of characters and physical properties to create entertaining gags that would be impossible and/or deadly in real life.
One of the more outstanding physical qualities in the world of Cloudy 2 is the unrealistic body movement and physical limitations of its characters. The most prominent characters that break the physical limits of reality are Flint Lockwood and Chester V. For example when Flint Lockwood types anything his hands literally flop/slap the keys of the keyboard. However, while Flint is slapping his hands on the keyboard, he is still able to operate his computer without pressing any specific keys. At the same time, Flint’s arms are “typing” so quickly his arms bend in a way that they look like they don’t have joints. There are even still where the illusion of speed is created, by having Flint typing with 3 arms. Another scenario in which Flint breaks real physical limitations is his elevator ride on his first day working at Live Corporation. Flint is shoved into a packed elevator and his nose gets caught on the door. The elevator then shoots downward at a high velocity, which in reality would have caused severe injury to his nose. The elevators travels so fast that his coffee leaves his cup and has him turn the cup upside down to catch his coffee. He his then shot out of the elevator at the same velocity and gets up relatively fine with a slight rub to the head. If this sequence was attempted in real life, there would be many deaths and injuries.
Throughout the film most of the characters though exaggerated still retained a sense of realism. Their movements were based on their center of gravity and their bodies realistically held its weight. With Chester V his body movements were a spectacular example of pushing non realistic movements while still retaining believability. Chester V’s actions would “follow through” in reverse order. Instead of his hands following the movement of his main body, his body would follow where his hand went. At one point Chester V walks two of his fingers on his desk, then raises the rest of his body over his two fingers without crushing his fingers our losing his balance. Cloudy 2 makes Chester’s impossible movements believable because the film had already established its physical limits or lack there of.
Body limitations are not the only physical boundaries to be broken in the film. In many instances the force and weight of many objects are ignored to uphold the film’s comedic tone. At one point in the film, three small cucumber lifeforms catch a timbering metal tankard with their face. Not only would the force of the metal tankard immediately crush the cucumber creatures, but the creatures catch the tankard with open hinged mouths. If by chance the pure weight of the tankard wasn’t enough to crush them, the force of the fall would at least snap the little area that holds the cucumber creatures’ heads to their bodies. Another scenario is earlier in the film where Flint is gathering his crew to travel back to Swallow Falls. Flint finds Brent working as a sign spinner for a restaurant. Brent had just throw his large sign high into the air, and upon seeing his friends catches the sign with his buttocks.Even with protective taping a large arrow advertisement would have significant force when falling to cause serious harm to anyone trying to catch it with the cleft of their butt. Yet in this animated universe, Brent is able to catch it without harm and state his catch phrase. Lastly, there is sequence where a fully equipped police car (motor and all) is able to float with five people, a monkey, and a leek aboard. The car even goes through a river raft scene in which the car falls off cliffs multiple times, and did not submerge once throughout the entire sequence.
And finally, there is the most iconic feature within the film where food comes to life. In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, it is established that Flint’s invention the FLDSMDFR can alter water molecules to make any food. However, near the end the machine goes out of control creating continuously larger food and hints at these foods having life. In Cloudy 2, the FLDSMDFR has indeed created sentient life forms creating various food pun animals like Shrimpanzees, Flamangoes, and “Jellyfish”. A peculiar example is the susheep. Even though this sushi and sheep hybrid is made up of separated rolls of sushi, the animal is able to function normally. While the front roll with the head leads the animal, the rear roll follow while the middle roll literally floats in between. Another example is the spider and hamburger hybrid, unfortunately they did not have a “scientific” name for it. The“hamspider”, if you will, travels with the use of its french fry legs, however in real life french fries would not be able to sustain the weight of a giant hamburger. The “hamspider’ is also able to produce cheese webbing that holds the same consistency of actual spider webbing. There are also creatures that are just various foods with a face attached to them. In the film there are marshmallow critters that are able to encase Flint in their bodies without suffocating him and also protecting him from harm. And then there is a strawberry name “Barry” who not only speaks but then befriends Flint and co. at the end of the film.
Cloudy 2 went above and beyond the wacky nature of the original film. The crazy character movements, physical gags, and cute life forms kept me interested throughout the film despite the lackluster story. The animators did a great job in manipulating the physical properties of characters and objects to create hilarious gags and jokes from beginning to end. And even with the zany nature of the film, it kept its believability by staying within its established physical limits. If real life physical limitations were taken into account the film would become incredibly boring. Many of the gags and jokes would cause death or critical injury if attempted in real life.
