The gang’s back in this follow-up to 2009’s surprise hit animation. Remember wide-eyed inventor Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader), spunky meteorologist Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), Steve the monkey (Neil Patrick Harris) and all the rest? It doesn’t matter if you don’t. The innovation lies in the setting: after a prologue involving a bad guy more obviously up to no good than Dr Evil, we’re plunged into a tropical world where, thanks to the invention that made junk food rain from the skies in the last film, ‘foodimals’ roam free.
Imagine a Jurassic Park constructed entirely out of whatever foodstuff best satisfies your appetite for a pun. They’ve got tacodiles, flamangoes, shrimpanzees and adorable little marshmallow creatures that look exactly like the Adipose blob monsters David Tennant battled in ‘Doctor Who’. Those last ones don’t have a pun for a name. They don’t need one – they’re so cute. This is the level of logic which underpins the whole film. At one point a character even ponders aloud that it’s probably best not to think too hard about how this ecology might work or whether it makes sense. Amen to that.