Sausage Party: Foodtopia premieres on Prime Video Thursday, July 11.
If you liked Sausage Party, good news! Sausage Party: Foodtopia recaptures the same tone and humor as the animated raunchfest that cast a crew of comic all-stars as horny, foul-mouthed, anthropomorphic groceries.
If you hated Sausage Party, terrible news! Sausage Party: Foodtopia recaptures the same tone and humor as the animated raunchfest that cast a crew of comic all-stars as horny, foul-mouthed, anthropomorphic groceries.
A follow-up to the 2016 comedy from writers Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg – who reunite to script the first episode – Foodtopia pretty much serves as a direct sequel to the film. “Pretty much” because it ignores Sausage Party’s final scene, in which the main characters discover they’re cartoons and step through an interdimensional portal in order to confront the actors playing them. Instead, the Shopwell’s supermarket gang venture outside the store to discover that their battle with the humans they once regarded as “god”s has inspired a global food-versus-people war – and the food has won. No doubt some will feel cheated by this swerve, but it ultimately didn’t bother me. Chasing that ending could have made for an interesting story, but it also feels like an entirely different direction. The series, as is, feels like more of an organic (har har) continuation of what was established in the movie.
Like Sausage Party, Foodtopia is squarely aimed at adults (and, inevitably, some kids with an appreciation for potty humor and a way around streaming-video content restrictions), filled with acts of extreme violence and extreme sex committed by hot dogs, buns, and other foodstuffs. Confirming that nothing is being held back here, there’s even an encore of theorgy scene from the movie’s, erm, climax right up front. But don’t let that bit of repetition fool you: Rogen and team still find plenty of novel ways to outdo themselves in the “What the hell am I watching?” department.
This is, once more, the product of smart people daring us to laugh at the stupidest jokes they can come up with – and often succeeding. The food puns are nonstop: Bread warriors are commanded to “form a path of yeast resistance”; there’s an egg character named Yoko. The jokes indicate an awareness of how silly and groan-worthy they are, and there’s something endearing and, yes, funny about that, because Foodtopia fully commits to the bit. The wordplay antics extend to several amusing song parodies, in which popular rock songs get a Sausage Party twist. (Weird Al would be proud.) I don’t want to give too much away, but did I appreciate that a parody of Heart's “Barracuda” is called “Can of Tuna”? Hell yes!
Going in, it’s easy to wonder how much uncharted storytelling territory remains within Sausage Party, or if the joke of “What if Pixar, but naughty?” has been played out. And while it does lose some steam near the end of an eight-episode season, Foodtopia gets surprising mileage out of questions about how its new civilization will function, and whether its citizens will fall into the traps of greed, stratification, and crime that ensnared humanity. In the midst of this, Frank the sausage (Rogen) and Brenda the hot dog bun (Kristen Wiig) want to figure out a way to make things more fair for everyone. However, Barry the sausage (Michael Cera) is taking a harsher viewpoint when it comes to enforcing the rules, while Sammy the bagel (Edward Norton) succumbs to the lure of fame. The growing rift and factions that form between these friends sets up some fun and funny scenarios, from Sammy’s sensationalistic talk show to a Fast Five-inspired car chase involving Frank.
The returning cast still seem to be having a blast, with Rogen doing his usual likable shtick (but as an incredulous sausage) and Norton still all in on the Woody Allen impression he’s doing as Sammy. (Conspicuously absent and unmentioned, considering their importance to Sausage Party: Bill Hader as Firewater and Salma Hayek as Teresa del Taco.) It’s very funny to hear Cera bring his understated delivery to a character who has discovered he needs adventure to feel motivated, giving an appreciated, off-the-cuff approach to lines like “As soon as you get the answer, I’m killing the motherf***er.” And Wiig, as is so often the case, is frequently the MVP, with her casual, introspective delivery adding layers to many of Brenda’s observations.
While Rogen, Wiig, Cera, and Norton drive much of the action, some of the strongest material goes to a couple of key additions to the cast. The central antagonist, Julius (voiced by Sam Richardson), is an orange who quickly becomes a rich and powerful figure by exploiting those who are barely getting by in Foodtopia. Yes, a wealthy tawny-hued character rising to political power is very clearly a riff on Donald Trump, but the show doesn’t try to get too cute with one-to-one comparisons. (After all, he’s named after both a food-court staple and a Roman emperor.) Richardson isn’t doing an impression of Trump, and is allowed to do his own thing as Julius, who flippantly begins barking orders and taking control of a coveted toy store, all while wearing a necklace made of human teeth.
One unfortunate hominid provides a lot of the best, weirdest, and grossest gags in Foodtopia: Jack, voiced by Will Forte. He’s a total dud of a person who finds himself the prisoner of talking food – a perfect role for Forte, who excels in this type of “drip caught in outrageous circumstances” role. (See also: The Last Man on Earth.) Forte does indeed nail it as Jack, whose knowledge of basic aspects of life outside of a grocery store makes him important to his captors in a way he never was to other people.
Even though it drops the “we’re actually cartoon characters!” angle, Foodtopia still takes the occasional chunk out of the fourth wall. There are standout moments that wink at the audience; the necessary expositional evils of a years-later sequel are amusingly tweaked when Frank and Brenda note how strange it is that they’re discussing the basics of their everyday life out loud as though they need to be re-explained. Other clever and more pointed moments concern the specific absurdity of the Sausage Party world. At one point, Jack goes on a wonderful run trying to logic out this reality of walking, talking, screwing chow, , like wondering whether it’s the water or the bottle that’s alive when it comes to a living water bottle.
As is almost always the case when an animated movie is turned into a TV series, the animation in Foodtopia clearly isn’t as detailed as in Sausage Party – TV budgets and production schedules are rarely going to allow for that. But the animators here still get the job done in making these characters feel appropriately real and filled with expression… including when the show gets tremendously explicit and/or uncomfortable to watch. There are pretty much no limits to how far Foodtopia is willing to go, which is underlined by the onscreen text that opens Episode 6: “We are proud to announce that this episode contains a scene so graphic that Amazon asked that we issue a warning.” What follows, and the sexual acts it depicts, is truly unlike anything I’d ever seen before (and audaciously disgusting to behold).
There’s a dark delight on display in the absolute brutality visited upon the characters of Foodtopia. Some of the biggest laughs come from, well, food murder, as we see just how messed up it can be if a talking egg breaks or a jelly donut bleeds out. And things sure aren’t any better for the humans, who, in a morbidly hilarious touch, are so unimportant to the food after they’ve died that their corpses are used as furniture and scarecrows.
