by Lisa Nystrom
Worth: $10.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
(Voices) Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera, Edward Norton
Intro:
… while the series lacks the unanticipated heart of the film, it will no doubt delight the fans who signed on for the crude, rude, and cartoonishly gross cheekiness of it all.
One of the more surprising box office hits of 2016, Sausage Party was a controversial animated feature from the minds of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter, and Ariel Shaffir, proving once and for all that animation is decidedly not just for kids. Taking the conventions popularised by Pixar and Dreamworks, and turning them on their heads with a brash irreverence, the film was 75 minutes of toilet humour and food related orgies with a surprising message at its core about humanity, community, and faith.
Picking up where the film left off—mid-orgy—Sausage Party: Foodtopia is an attempt to recapture some of that lightning in a bottle 8 years on. Our heroes, Frank, Brenda, Barry, and Sammy are free of the supermarket they called home and looking to build their very own community away from the dangers of human greed. Unfortunately for them, there are bigger threats in this world than the munchies, and the team is forced to battle nature, the weather, existentialism, and betrayal from within before their dreams of a liberated society of food can be made a reality.
As with the film, it’s the cast of voice actors on board who lend real weight to the project. Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera, and Edward Norton all reprise their roles, while Will Forte, David Krumholtz, SungWon Cho and a host of others all make appearances as various foodstuffs or human survivors of the foodpocalypse. There’s also a surprising twist to the established food versus human rivalry, the story veering off towards star-crossed lovers territory with the introduction of an interspecies romance, but it’s nothing that The Bee Movie hasn’t already covered, if a lot more graphic this time around.
Just as the original film was elevated by a score from the inimitable Alan Menken and Christopher Lennertz, Foodtopia has Lennertz on board once again, this time with composer Alexander Bornstein, both of whom have worked on Lost in Space, The Boys, and Supernatural, and whose music provides a level of tension and cinematic atmosphere you would hardly expect from the day to day lives of hot dogs and bagels.
Whether this spin-off was necessary is up for debate, but it does provide another helping of that very specific brand of humour mastered by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The dialogue and comedy beats have the kind of flow that comes from a team well-versed in speaking each other’s language, and while the series lacks the unanticipated heart of the film, it will no doubt delight the fans who signed on for the crude, rude, and cartoonishly gross cheekiness of it all.
