DVD: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, For retail & rental (Sony)

It's that age-old story: boy invents machine that converts water into food; boy becomes hero when hot dogs and ice cream rain down on his home town; boy battles to shut down machine when town is struck by a typhoon of spaghetti.

After some of Pixar's recent, convoluted plots, it's a relief to watch a cartoon with such a simple scenario, especially as all the more time and trouble have been spent on the delightful characters, quickfire visual gags and sly parodies of disaster-movie conventions.