John Kricfalusi Reviews “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”

Ratings

2 of 5 stars
What’s this?

The creator of “Ren & Stimpy” and an unsparing critic of substandard animation takes on last weekend’s box office champion. Even if you have no interest in this minor children’s movie, this review is notable as a fascinating look inside an animator’s brain. Kricfalusi views “Meatballs” through a real craftsman’s lens, revealing much about what makes for ambitious animation. And he casts a cold eye on how the prevalence of mediocre cartoons has lowered our standards.

“I would give this an even zero — which is leagues ahead of any other animated feature today. Most cartoon features are thousands of points in the negative.

“It’s not like the old days, where cartoons were expected to be entertaining. In the 1940s you might rate cartoons between 50% and 100%, because they had higher entertainment standards to begin with. Even a Terrytoons has some entertainment value — because it’s not purposely trying not to, unlike modern animation.”

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  1. Thomas

    Khoi, I love finding stuff like this from you, thanks. But every time I read a post where you link to another site, I have a hard time figuring out which the “main” link is. Here, it’s none of the linked text in the body of the post, it’s only in the tiny, almost invisible “jump to this link” at the bottom of the post. Which one is “this” link anyway? It’s made worse because I typically read you via RSS, and the link I’m wanting to get to isn’t actually part of the RSS version of you feed (or at least I can’t find it in any of the readers I usually use).

    Consider making the primary link part of the body of your post, please?

  2. Khoi Vinh

    Thomas: great feedback and also a great kick in the pants, thank you. I’ll try and re-think the way these are being presented and make some changes soon.

  4. Neal

    Your site is always a great read, Khoi!

    Kricfalusi’s blog post is interesting, but I take issue with the breadth and intensity of his criticism. Kudos to him for Ren and Stimpy- he certainly knows animation -but anyone with so much ego as to sum up every modern animated film, the entire output of all his industry colleagues, as total shit or worse, loses some of my respect.

Thank you! Your remarks have been sent to Khoi.