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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP’s look at the latest Blu-ray discs and DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Bill Hader channels his inner fat kid, Thomas Jane swings his love pump and Jay Baruchel dates up.

Pick of the Week

For people who wouldn’t be opposed to free, albeit probably contaminated junk food falling from the sky: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 3-D

Based on the 1978 book of the same name by Judi Barrett, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is quite literally an insane animated comedy from the makers of Open Season and Surf’s Up. The flick is a quick witted, seizure inducing thrill ride that moves along at a frenetic pace.

The lead character, Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader), probably should have been diagnosed with some form of Attention Deficit Disorder. If anything, it’d explain why Flint incessantly bounces from one thing to the next with little time reserved for, you know, breathing. No worries on my end though; the dude is a charmer.

The movie at times plays like an extended comedy sketch. In one scene, Flint and his admirer are lively dancing within a castle of Jell-O. In the next, a former child star, eaten alive by a giant turkey, is redone as a bizarre half-turkey, half-human freak that definitely would have terrified me had I seen the movie as a child.

Cloudy’s humor, though relentlessly zany, also in parts caters to the older demos who may be watching the movie with young ones. Its unexpected crack at intelligent humor usually worked with me, and is probably the main reason why I came away enjoying what I saw.





Lovers of the book, however, will likely be ill impressed with Sony Picture Animation’s adaptation. It’s comparable to something like Where the Wild Things Are, in that there’s only so much the filmmakers could have done with just a handful of pages of source material.

Taking sizeable liberties in adapting Meatballs to the screen, Meatballs’ filmmakers all but gave up on the original story. In its place is a more complex storyline involving broken father-and-son relationships, an influx of secondary characters, puppy love and how the American way of aiming for “bigger and better” negatively influences the environment. The disc is now being released in 3-D, so it can be seen just as intended.

Disc includes: A Recipe for Success: The Making of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs featurette, “Raining Sunshine” by Miranda Cosgrove music video, interactive “Raining Sunshine” sing-a-long, Making of “Raining Sunshine” by Miranda Cosgrove featurette, Key Ingredients: The Voices of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, extended scenes, Progressive Reels with Introductions featurette, Early Development Scenes featurette, interactive splat button, Flint’s Good Fight game

For people who enjoy television shows that rely heavily on the male penis: Hung: The Complete First Season

People are talking about HBO again. Of course, this is thanks in large part to True Blood, which is performing absurdly well for the pay cabler. More than five million people tuned in for the vampire dramedy’s third season premiere, good enough for sixth place on the cable TV chart for the week ending June 13th.

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