Parking! Purchasing! Sitting! Watching! Laughing! Reviewing!

Sorry, got carried away there. Slipped into Flint Lockwood mode for a minute. He’s the charming hero (voiced by SNL‘s Bill Hader) at the center of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, one of the nicest surprises I’ve had at the movies in awhile. Lockwood is a wildly creative and misunderstood inventor whose mind is in constant hyperdrive as he flits around his homemade laboratory, accessible via hydraulically-lifted port-a-potty, barking out gerunds describing his activity.

His latest invention — and the one that might just earn him the stature he craves — is a machine that converts food into water. After a mishap that sends the machine into the atmosphere, Flint discovers he has the ability to make it rain food. A cheeseburger shower is met with wild excitement in his town of Swallow Falls, where the sole dietary staple is the city’s primary export, sardines. The cheeseburgers are followed by steaks, bacon and eggs, jelly beans and a beautiful wintry layer of ice cream. Thing go wrong, of course, and the yummy weather becomes more dangerous than fun (spaghetti tornado, anyone?).

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is the best non-Pixar animated film I’ve seen since Kung-Fu Panda (there’s a quote for the poster!). It’s not deep or poignant or thought-provoking… it’s just a great time — a lot of laughs (smart, satirical laughs worthy of The Simpsons), some spectacular imagery (inspired by the illustrations in Judi and Ron Barrett’s book) and a dash of father-son sweetness.

It also contains a lovely date scene set entirely inside a mold of Jell-O, which has to be a cinematic first.