WesternAnimation Have to see it to believe it
I'm a troper who's in LOVE with bad movies. So Bad It's Good is an absolute goldmine to me. And once upon a time, I found out about this little movie, Foodfight. It was released years after the planned date, it was poorly animated, and it starred Charlie Sheen! It was a dream come true, and eventually I got the rare chance to view the amazing trainwreck of a movie.
To sum up the plot, take a cup full of Casablanca, add a pinch of Wreck-It Ralph, and cool until you get something akin to Thanksgiving leftovers. From the Indiana Jones-esque hero to the cat girl love interest who is contractually obligated to smile to the spasming villain figure, this movie will delight the mental taste buds of anyone who loves bad movies. Special mention goes to Vlad Chocul, who is certainly not Count Chocula at all and is also completely unambiguously homosexual.
The main attraction is the animation, which is flawed beyond belief. A character in Foodfight is either mostly idle or static, or they're having a seizure while hooking themselves up to an array of car batteries. Almost everything that explodes will become massive blobs, which is hilarious when there's a big climatic scene with lots of exploding food being tossed around.
All in all, Foodfight is too horrible to go over everything in one review, especially when it's been a while since my viewing, but if you love bad movies, this thing is a delightful must-see movie. It's so horrible that I can't help but say to watch it, just to experience the ridiculousness.
WesternAnimation A mess of awful animation, bad writing and stupid design decisions
The premise is something only a marketer would come up with: all the popular brands and mascots - such as Charlie the Tuna, Mrs. Buttersworth, Twinkie the Kid, and more work together to fight off an evil "Brand X" that threatens their existence. It's CGI animated, and will promote the already well-known brands while cementing the idea in kids' heads that these brands are "good guys" and anything outside of that is evil and to be avoided. What could possibly go wrong?
How about everything?
The animation is awful. Some of the character movements are very puppet-like, and special effects such as a spilled carton of milk look ridiculous, as the milk spill looks like it was painted onto the floor and grows in size. Sunshine, the main character's girlfriend, is perpetually smiling no matter her mood - it's as if the modeler who created her graphics accidentally created her mouth in a :D shape and forgot to make it flexible.
The characters make no sense. Okay, I understand that this is a world where food mascots all coexist, so naturally there will be a lot of variety, similar to Wreck-It Ralph's world of diverse video game characters. But while Wreck-It Ralph created original characters who believably could have come from games, Foodfight!'s original characters would never be used as a mascot for anything. Who in real life would use Dex Dogtective or Sunshine as a mascot? Sunshine is a human with cat whiskers and cat ears, who can never stop smiling, even when sad. Why would any food company use that freak as their mascot? Along with other characters like naked gerbils, if these are supposed to be mascots... I just can't see it happening.
The story is loaded with puns, and puns are the source of most of its humor. Sure there's some jokes involving weird logic, like when Dex is trapped inside a giant dryer and finds a way to escape by following a sock ("Socks always escape from the dryer! Follow that sock!"), but most of the humor involves food-related puns. And many of those puns are sexual double entendres, a very questionable thing to put in a movie that's aimed squarely at kids, that no adult could possibly enjoy.
And speaking of questionable, there's straight-up murder in the story, some onscreen. Not many kids' movies have the balls to actually kill characters, but I'm not proud of this one for doing so.
WesternAnimation Its bad...but could've been worse.
People are calling it the worst animated film ever made. Critics are panning it as we speak. I wouldn't go that far, yeah its terrible, but let's get a sense of perspective people.
Felix the Cat, and the two Titanic animated movies remain my unholy trinity of animated flicks. They are HORRIBLE from beginning to end, and the latter being insulting to victims and families of the tragedy.
They were laughs to be had with this film, most of them I had with Mr. Clipboard, who is animated so horrendously its actually kind of amusing and fascinating to watch.
So the story is garbage, but the worse ever? No.
WesternAnimation It's Horrible but...
it could have been a decent movie, maybe even a good one.
Before you stone me listen. The basic idea, advertising icons coming to life and inhabiting a world of their own isn't a bad one. Sure it's derivative of Toy Story but Toy Story itself is derivative of shorts from Looney Toons and Animaniacs. The Casablanca homage is potentially clever and Sheen Duff, Longoria and Curry are all skilled comedic actors. Here's what should have been done:
First, kill the animators and film and audio editors. Note, I'm giving the writers a pass because as in The Nostalgia Critic's review I suspect there really was someone on the phone nagging them for more fart jokes.
Second, forget about marketing yourself as a kids movie. If you're going to be a fetish film, BE a fetish film! Fly that perv flag proudly! Aim for at least a hard PG-13.
Third, at the end Madame X is revealed as having a crush on Dexter. Emphasize this as her motive, give her a bit of sympathy.
Fourth, you had ,depending on who you listen to 45-65 million dollars to play with, spend it right! What did they spend it on anyway/ My theory? Hookers and blow. The second one of which would go a long way to explain what happened to the movie.
WesternAnimation Scary and fascinating
Having watched several reviews of the thing, I already knew what to expect, but still wanted to see the trainwreck myself.
Every flaw of this movie has already been dissected to death, but I gotta be honest: if it had been released with an actually finished animation work… the first half of the film would almost have been vaguely tolerable. Not good by any stretch of the imagination, but at least not completely horrible. The latter half, however, is just a mess on every level.
But anyway, there is one thing that doomed this movie no matter how good the animation could have been: its very concept. Yes, featuring food brand mascots as heroes was a stupid idea − not only is it morally dubious to base a kid's film (?) entirely on product placement, but it wouldn't even have been exportable. Outside of maybe Mr. Clean, none of the mascots are recognizable to someone who hasn't lived in the US. So all the money spent to get the mascots was completely wasted − they could have just as well invented original mascots like the main characters (it's not like the "famous" mascots really have any prominent role in the film anyway).
Still, this film is fascinating in just how awry everything went before, during and after its production. You can almost play a game to spot all the plot-holes, jump cuts, inconsistencies and failed animations. I can't even blame the animators − it's quite clear that by the end they just wanted to be done with the damn thing and put it together with digital scotch-tape.
So I don't know if the film is entertaining… But's certainly fascinating.