Fruits, vegetables and cheeseburgers get their film shelf-life extended in the animated comedy Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, as the franchise explores a new world of living, breathing “foodimals”.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, released in 2009 and inspired by a 1978 children’s book of the same name, saw the fictional island of Swallow Falls devoured by giant but inanimate food that falls out of the sky, generated from a machine created by the island’s eccentric inventor Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader).

In Cloudy 2, released in US theatres this weekend, Flint and his friends, return to Swallow Falls only to find that the monster-sized food has become a living, breathing new world.

With sweeping shots of lush landscape inhabited by living “food­imals”, Flint must decide whether to destroy the world that has evolved from his own creativity, as his new boss Chester V demands, or let it flourish.

“The idea that Flint’s on this journey to destroy himself was cool and to manifest his creativity in the island was a great assignment,” co-director Kris Pearn said.

Unlike many animated films that feature super-villains defined by evil traits, Cloudy 2 baddie Chester V, voiced by comedian Will Forte, is a more complex villain masked under a forward-thinking innovator whose user-friendly products have become embedded in society.

Sounds familiar? That is because Pearn and Cameron said they based Chester V on some of the world’s most celebrated entrepreneurs – Apple’s Steve Jobs, Virgin’s Richard Branson, astronomer Carl Sagan and Disney creator Walt Disney.

We weighted our designs towards the healthy food

“If Flint didn’t learn how to love, he would turn into Chester, who was the same kind of backyard inventor as Flint was, but he just went down the dark path. We definitely wanted to feel some honesty in Chester,” Cameron said.

Cameron and Pearn’s idea to create a world in Cloudy 2 where food has evolved into living creatures came from the first film where many of the oversized food items, like gummy bears, chased the townspeople of Swallow Falls.

“We weighted our designs towards the healthy food, and produce became something we wanted to push forward especially because of the colours.”

The foodimals in Cloudy 2 include Barry, a wide-eyed strawberry that takes a liking to Sam, hippopotatomus, eggplanatee, flamangos and the terrifying cheespider, a cheeseburger with sesame-seed eyes and French fry legs.

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