Book vs Movie: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, written by Judi Barrett was my absolute favorite book when I was younger!   So, naturally I was ecstatic to watch the movie as well!

Unfortunately, I was very disappointed with the movie.  In this case since the book is a relatively short book I understood that it was going to take some imagination to make it into a full length film, but the movie is certainly just “inspired by” the book because there were many more differences than similarities. 

First the characters in the book and movie are very different.  In the book Grandpa tells his two grandchildren about a town called Chewandswallow who gets all of its food from the sky.  None of these characters are in the movie.  In the movie, the main character is Flint Lockwood, who is a young inventor who creates a machine that turns water into food.  Another main character of the movie is a young weather intern, Sam Sparks.  By the end of the book these two characters fall in love.  Neither of these two characters wer from the book.

Another big difference between the movie and book was the name of the town.  In the book the town is cleverly named, Chewandswallow, where in the movie the town was called Shallow Falls.

The movie is enjoyable to watch and has an entertainment value, but I am disappointed that it wasn’t more like the book.  The book is a classic in my eyes because of its creativity, simplistic nature, and the silly nature of the town of Chewandswallow.   The book will remain my favorite of the two.