On Saturday, we had a family outing to see Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. It is a good children’s book and now a good movie too.

I don’t know if the book was ever published in the UK, but I’d never heard of it until we took it out of the library a couple of years ago. My oldest daughter loved it and it certainly made a welcome change from the constant diet of books about princesses and fairies. Within the movie, there are little parodies of Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Independence Day, and a few other films. Bimbo TV weather girls are also taken to the cleaners. Mr T and James Caan are excellent. The movie also chips away at America’s super-size-me culture of all-you-can-eat-buffets, breakfast-served-all-day and eating-more-even-when you-are-full.