A scientist named Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) has spent his entire life creating inventions that were unwanted or faulty, which doesn't help his struggle to try to see eye-to-eye with his dad (voiced by James Caan). Finally, while trying to solve world hunger, he develops a method to directly convert water into food and releases the effects on the world. Hunger is eliminated as weather delivers food, but a problem of global proportions soon evolves when the food weather machine that Flint invented develops a mind of its own, rebels against his creator, and starts wreaking havoc on the world. Flint is now saddled with the task of stopping his maniac invention to end the ensuing chaos and save the town of Chewandswallow and the world.