We’ve all seen a Disney cartoon. We grew up on the stuff. It’s family friendly and wholesome content that reinforces the notion that animation – at least “Western” animation – is still primarily for children. Now there have been other, more adult oriented cartoons out there (I’m looking at you South Park), but nothing has ever been quite as crude as Seth Rogen’s Sausage Party – a film that took great pleasure in poking fun at the cliched churn over at Disney and Pixar.
Featuring anthropomorphized groceries and vibrant animation, Sausage Party looked like your everyday, run-of-the-mill children’s cartoon. At least on the surface. But Rogen, and his long-time writing partner, Evan Goldberg, wrote a film that was filled with so much vulgarity and sexual innuendo, that it would likely even make Trey Parker and Matt Stone blush. But despite being a relentless, raucous, and violent escapade, Sausage Party had a genuinely great story that tackled questions of religion and belief systems.
Now if you’ve watched any Rogen/Goldberg programming, you know that despite being heavily influenced by marijuana and the bizarre, they also have a tendency to bolster everything they do with a strong moral message. Just take Preacher, or This Is the End, or even The Night Before, and you will realize that there is actually a lot of heart within the depths of all that debauchery.
Sausage Party was a runaway success in 2016. It became the highest grossing R-rated animated film of the time, and so it wasn’t long before news began circling about a potential sequel. It was going to be a hybrid of animation and live action (think Who Framed Roger Rabbit, or Space Jam), which could have been exciting, but nevertheless slowly dissipated into oblivion. Fast forward to 2022 when it was finally announced that the return of our foodie heroes was on the horizon, not as a feature film, but in the form of a Prime Video series.
Sausage Party: Foodtopia, welcomes back our colourful cast of characters as they now find themselves faced with building a new society after taking back the world from us humans. It’s basically Planet of the Apes, meets Lord of the Flies, with a little Animal Farm thrown in for good measure. Watching these eight episodes, it’s very clear that they have been inspired by the the ideas that exist within that particular sci-fi genre – creating a new society, governing it, and eventually encountering the power struggles that come with such an enterprise.
The series gets off to a bit of a bumpy start – it begins with yet another “food party,” the animation felt subpar compared to the original, and it involved the same recipe (no pun intended) of “what do the food have to learn from human society this week.” The conflicts felt repetitive. The dialogue felt forced and weakly written. And the jokes were overtly sexual and vulgar for the sake of it. The series began to feel like a lost cause. But as I pushed myself to keep going, it miraculously began to get better.
The series is centered around an election-themed plot, in which the main antagonist is an orange named Julius, who preys on people’s insecurities and begins to spout populist propaganda, as he promises to make Foodtopia great again. (Very timely!) This sequel was very much a parable for American democracy that touched on themes such as the judicial system, corruption, politics, as well as greed and power. In short, Sausage Party: Foodtopia began to feel like a lot more than just fart jokes and bad puns.
The politics of the series suddenly made it a lot more relatable. Is it by no means a drama, but there were points that took a genuinely dark turn. There are some real-world topics being discussed here, especially regarding the systemic racism and class divide in America. Money was the root of all evil, and it was a point that hit too close to home while I watched the downfall of their society.
Foodtopia might have started as a peaceful loving society, but as the rules were laid out, and capitalism began to take root, tensions grew, vegetables turned on each other, the rich got richer, while the poor got poorer. It sounds absurd to say, but this is a very human story.
That said, there are unfortunately one too many stumbles in the series, and it fails to recapture the zing of its predecessor. Rewatching the original film made me realize how flat the series actually was. Sausage Party was a great watch, with a strong message that paced itself in a way that had you entranced by what was happening on screen. Foodtopia fails to do that in every way.
There are far too many points at which you will fall off, or even just start checking your social media feed as it plays on in the background. With half baked parody songs about food, as well as a pun every 10 seconds, all of it becomes pretty tiring pretty quick. And that’s a shame. Because it comes at the expense of a genuinely fascinating and self-reflective story.
Perhaps this could have worked better as a film. With a collective run time of around 210 minutes, there’s a lot that could be trimmed down in order for this to become a much tighter story. With that much time at their disposal, it genuinely felt the writers were desperately trying to figure out how to fill in the narrative gaps and hit their contractually obligated eight episode target. Cue fart jokes, terrible references, and again, more and more puns. If you have the patience, you might feel rewarded by the show’s political message. I’m still not sure if it’s worth the time and the effort. God knows this is one party I would have happily opted out of.
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