Featuring the voices of Bill Hader, Anna Faris, and Will Forte. Rated G.

The dangers of genetically modified foods, the ruthlessness of multinational corporations, and the cultlike appeal of brands such as Apple: it’s not exactly the stuff that kids’ animated movies are typically made of.

Give Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 credit, then, for never coming across as preachy or heavy-handed, despite some decidedly adult themes. Watching small-town America get destroyed by modern science has never been so much fun.

This sequel opens with nerdish young scientist Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) standing in the middle of once-idyllic Swallow Falls. His invention, a machine that turns water into supersized food, has made the island community look like the world’s largest buffet has exploded, its streets littered with Chernobyl-brand chicken legs and pea pods straight from the garden of the Jolly Green Giant. The town is quickly evacuated, not, strangely, by the National Guard, but by an Apple-style corporation headed by a deceiving superinventor (Will Forte).

That’s when things get more delightfully weird than TV’s Adventure Time, with the proceedings taking on an acid-spiked tone, right down to the Day-Glo jungle that engulfs Swallow Falls. The food machine goes rogue, spitting out plant-animal hybrids (watermelophants and apple piethons) designed to give hard-core vegetarians nightmares, with Flint asked to intervene before the mainland is invaded by deliciously surreal cheespiders (think a quarter-pounder turned ruthless arachnid, with french-fry legs and eyes instead of sesame seeds).

Like the unapologetically good-natured original, this is family-friendly entertainment in its cleanest sense. What makes the sequel work despite a lack of edge is its impressively bizarre world, where shrimpanzees swinging from trees somehow seem plausible. You might even get something to think about, such as how genetically modified food can’t be all bad, for no reason other than baby tacodile supremes are so bloody cute, right down to their tiny jalapeño tails.