There’s a lot to be said for the theory that we’re in the middle of a new golden age for animated films. Pixar have been leading the way with artistically ambitious gems like Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and WALL-E, while Up goes into this year’s Oscars with five nominations to its name and a chance – admittedly slim, considering the irresistible momentum of the respective Avatar and Hurt Locker bandwagons – of becoming the first animation to win the Best Picture gong.

Sony’s Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs was overlooked when Academy Award nominations were being handed out and its worldwide box-office takings are less than one-third of Up’s phenomenal $725 million, but this wildly inventive comedy is further evidence of the healthy state of animated movies. Based on a children’s book of the same name by Judi and Ron Barrett, the film version is a prequel revealing how geeky young inventor Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) creates a gizmo that turns water into food. When he launches the contraption into the clouds over his hometown of Swallow Falls, located on a tiny island in the Atlantic Ocean, cheeseburgers start raining from the sky.

The islanders are delighted by the free food and tourists flock from all over the world to visit this land of miraculous weather. But human greed soon leads to super-sized disaster and it’s up to Flint, his pet monkey Steve (Neil Patrick Harris) and weather girl Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) to beat back the unnatural forces of spaghetti twisters, giant Gummi Bears and headless chickens that look like they’ve escaped from David Lynch’s Eraserhead.

As the weather fronts get weirder, the screen is filled with ever-more-bizarre images: a palace of Jell-O, meatball meteorites, anaphylactic shock-inducing peanut brittle rocks, ice-cream snow that would cause Southern Trains and Sussex schools to close down indefinitely… It’s as if a mescaline-crazed Heston Blumenthal has rewritten the Book Of Genesis. Or Terry Gilliam and Alejandro Jodorowsky have co-directed an M&S food advert.

The spectacular visuals are backed up by a smart script that references various Hollywood disaster movies (The Perfect Storm, The Day After Tomorrow, War Of The Worlds), but they’re not ladled on like a giant jar of syrup on a house-sized pancake. There are also some touching human moments between Flint and his emotionally stunted father (James Caan) and barbed observations about political venality. The extras are great, too – particularly the interactive Blu-ray Splat Mode, which enables you to throw virtual food at the screen. If only the makers of the Pirates Of The Caribbean films had incorporated a similar feature with a brick.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.

Colin Houlson