Will future film historians, looking back, consider these CGI animal comedies to be the true horror movies of the 2000s? Whether it’s

“…it’s odd that the movie fails to recognize our understanding of bullying has significantly changed since 1984.

How prescient that the first Pixar picture had the word story in the title. The studio’s computer-animated visuals would go on to be increasingly dazzling, yet the hallmark of its work has always been ingenious, original storytelling – storytelling aimed, first and foremost, at adults. As it focuses on a roomful of playthings who go

“…evokes that time in your life when anything was possible if you had a toy or two and an hour or so on your own.

“…as fun and witty as its predecessors, but the movie has a completely different reason for being.

“There are only a couple of quiet moments … but the movie makes the occasional calmness count.

“How embedded has Earth Day become in our culture? It now gets its own inane Hollywood movie to mark the occasion.

“…a triumph on two fronts: an animation masterpiece from one of America’s finest filmmakers.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs hits the humorous sweet spot for a computer-animated family film. It’s smart without alienating kids and witty without winking at parents by way of sleazy innuendo. It’s a good time, for whatever that’s worth. Based on the intricately detailed children’s book of the same name, the movie lifts many

“…means to tap into nostalgia for the studio’s traditionally animated musicals of the 1990s, but it may have picked the wrong year to do so.