MovieChat Forums > Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) Discussion > How is this 'based on' the children's bo...

How is this 'based on' the children's book?


I loved the book when I was a kid, and it was the first book I bought. I loved the story and the illustrations, especially of the two boys who are sick from eating too many cream cheese and jelly sandwiches.

This "adaptation" has nothing to do with the book rather than the title and the idea of food falling from the sky, and even that is very different, because it was never explained in the book. There are a few visual references to the book, like a girl catching orange juice in an upside down umbrella, but that is all. Otherwise, this is the same story line from other animated films--an unappreciated loser with a cocky adversary and a reporter love interest, like Megamind. I wish they had stuck with the story from the book and expanded on it.

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The book couldn't be made into a feature film as it didn't have a story. It was just a series of metaphors and images. I think the story developed here was fine if hardly original.

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I read the book and the Mars sequel. In each of them, it was "explained" by showing that it was a dream sequence.

(Entire storyline of first book: Pancake accidentally lands on the boy's head. That night, Grandpa tells a story; after that, both children have a long dream about food falling from sky. They wake up and go play.)

Can anyone point me to a site that explains the difference between "based on" and "inspired by" and "from the book" and the like. I haven't googled it yet, and suspect there is a definitions page somewhere on IMDB.

Actually, the movie takes quite a bit from the book, but a lot was changed/added. The jello palace, for one thing, was in the book. The baseball game that ended when a zillion pies fell from the sky and the score board read "GAME CALLED ON ACCOUNT OF PIE". The food getting bigger and bigger, leading to the disaster and the migration from the island. The whole setting was the same, the island in the Atlantic and the town's name and look.

The other posters are quite correct -- the book did not have a plot to speak of. "When the food was getting too big, everybody had to leave. The end."

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Entire storyline of movie: A failed inventor creates a machine that makes it rain food. The machine creates a dangerous storm and mutant food, so the inventor and his friends must run afoul the mayor to shut it down.

Of course, they expanded on this for the movie.

I think that the point of the original post was that they could have expanded on the book. Instead of an inventor who lives with his dad and hooks up with a female reporter, it could easily have been two kids who live with their grandfather. Maybe grampa is the inventor, maybe one of the kids is a genius, maybe the inventor is a new character and catalyst.

They expanded on Meet the Robinsons without replacing all of the main characters. Why not this?



"Baba Booey! Baba Booey!"

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It's BASED ON. Sometimes I think people don't know what the word "base"/"basis" means. The book is clearly the basis for this movie, even if much were changed (or changed and changed... added). If they hadn't given credit they would probably have been sued for a butt-load by the publisher. People who had read the book, seen the differences and realized the basis would have complained even more.
But man, people are usually even whining about the "based on a true story" tag in movies with the smallest of differences from the true story.

Foundation/fundament/groundwork, is synonyms for base/basis.

"Based on the novel" means "The foundation/groundwork for the movie was layed by the novel"
NOT
"This will be a scene-for-scene adaptation of the novel"

"Based on a true story" means "the basis for the movie was a true story"
NOT
"This will be a shot-for-shot adaptation of a true story"

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I should re-iterate my request for a page that lays out the differences between "Based on a truse story" and "inspired by a true story" etc., etc.

Because, as I should have mentioned, I did see such a set of definitions once, and I wished I had kept a copy. Maybe I will do yet another search; one may turn up.

If you accept what I just said, then you might understand that people really want that distinction to be reliable. When they've watched something like "Chariots of Fire" and gone home thinking that they've learned something about the 1924 Olympics, and then find out the the most dramatic parts of that movie never actually happened,... then they feel cheated.

Hollywood used to be pretty shameless about that kind of thing. They learned that sales and attendance go up if it says "A True Story", but also if they add extra twists and extra dramatic touches and "make the story better". --- And those two things conflict.

So there may be a set of authoritative definitions of what can be labelled "True" and what has to be labelled "Inspired By" or "Based on".

Here is a good description, and article:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-A-True-Story-Based-On-A-True-Story-and-Inspired-By-A-True-Story-in-movies

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Whatever the correct terminology i.e. "based on", "adapted" etc, I too would have liked to see it more like the book. Of course the book isn't very long but they still could have stayed closer to the artistic style and plot. They just would have had to flesh it out some more is all.
It's annoying when they make something and the only similarity is the title and some very basic aspect of the premise. Not surprising tho. At all.

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A lot of people seem to have missed the story that the book did indeed have:

The grandfather is telling this seemingly outrageous disaster story to his kids. We assume it's just one of his many tall tales.

The next day we go outside, and it's quite heavily implied that the snow is mashed potatoes and the Sun is a giant Jello mold - revealing that Grandpa's story was most likely true, and he was a survivor of the disaster.

If you call me insane again, I'll eat your other eye.

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It's like the reboot movie Jumanji. It has nothing to do with Jumanji except for a very few references and it's titular name. I think they do this just to avoid lawsuits. And maybe for a little bit of marketing.

Don't you think it would be more moral if Disney actually licensed Simba the White Lion for The Lion King even if their movie only has tiny resemblance for the former? They got away with that just because they're Disney vs an unknown Japanese company. But I think they still should, if only to respect the original intellectual property.

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