Recap / The Nostalgia Critic S 7 E 7

Release: April 8, 2014

Film: Foodfight!

Tagline: The worst animated movie... EVER!

This review contains examples of:

• Anger Montage: The review begins with Critic returning home, smashing various food products with a frying pan, and then collapsing on the floor a sobbing mess.
• Anything but That!: The Critic is so horrified at the shopper and her baby that he confesses to his "sins" in order to purge himself of the scenario.
• Artistic License – Biology: The Critic really is not too pleased to find out that with the bit character of Fat Cat Burglar, they couldn't tell a rat (the character) apart from a cat,^note Although the name seems to stem from the burglar stealing cats, not being one himself. pointing out that someone who would fail at a Fisher Price toy like a Spin-'N-Say shouldn't be given $65 million to make a movie.
  Spin 'N Say: A kitty cat goes...
  Malcolm: Squeak squeak!
  Critic: Give him all our money, clearly we're dealing with artistic genius here!
  Malcolm: I pooped myself!
  Critic: Give him an extra grand for that.
  • Moments later, this happens again when Sunshine Goodness first appears. She is ostensibly a cat, but she clearly looks like a human with cat ears. Again, the Critic is more than a little annoyed.
    "Are cats hard to draw? Did a cat snub you at a party, so you refuse to portray them on any form of film?"
• Bait-and-Switch: After the Critic suffers a meltdown over the appearance of an ugly shopper, he claims the movie is one long punishment to him for all his sins (some of which he atoned for in To Boldly Flee), then proceeds to "confess" to pop cultural "sins" such as canceling Firefly, encouraging Fred, suggesting Taco Bell's infamous breakfast menus, making John Travolta misspell Idina Menzel's name at the 2014 Oscars, and removing most of the cartoons from Cartoon Network.
• Big "SHUT UP!": The Critic's reaction to the multiple between-credits scenes after Dex and Sunshine's wedding.
• Big "WHAT?!": The Critic repeatedly screams this in a very high-pitched voice after seeing a hideous shopper and her equally hideous baby.
• Brick Joke: The Critic takes censure at Lady X's plaid gloves, saying they make her look like her hands are on backwards, and wondering if that was ever a real fashion trend. Towards the end of the episode Tamara is seen wearing plaid gloves. Apparently they had to custom make them.
• Call-Back: The Critic indirectly points out to how the anthem sing-off scene rips off that from Casablanca by sarcastically claiming it is ripping off Barb Wire instead — which, in his review of said film, he lambasts as a wholesale copycat of Casablanca. As a punchline, he puts in the cut of Yvonne crying "Vive le France!" through tears of patriotism in the former film after she and her fellow Frenchmen sing "La Marseillaise" in defiance of the Nazis present.
• Department of Redundancy Department: The name of the store where the film takes place is "Marketropolis Market", which the Critic lampshades.
  Critic: Redundant much, redundant?
• Downer Ending: The ending of the review puts the Critic's breakdown shown in the opening in context—he was too late into riding the ironic popularity of Foodfight!. At the end of a repeat of the breakdown sequence, the Critic, lying on the floor, sternly warns the audience against watching this movie.
• Film Fic: In reverse, a skit shows that the movie was apparently adapted from one anonymous man's work intended for the "Horny Furry S&M Catfight Boxing Fanfiction Forum", which was accidentally sent to his Hollywood agent.
• Genre Savvy: The Critic notes that the whole "Sunshine leaving Dex to check on Dan" scenario screams "Damsel in Distress Flag". It turns out he's right.
  Critic: Yeah, I'm just gonna put this on ya. (Sticks a Post-It onto the screen over Sunshine which reads "Kidnap Me!!!") We all know that's pretty much what you're saying.
• How We Got Here: The beginning scenes of the review happened an hour after the Critic reviewed the film.
• Mooning: When the Critic claims that DreamWorks Animation was outsourced with animating the big fight scene in the climax, he jokes that they deliberately sent bad animation, enclosed with a picture of three men flashing their asses on the camera, with the faces of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen photoshopped onto their heads, as well as Katzenberg giving the finger.
• National Stereotypes: One of the Critic's biggest complaints about Foodfight! is the fact that several of its characters are blatant racial stereotypes, such as Daredevil Dan (African-American), Maximilius Moose (Italian) and Dr. Si Nustrix (Jewish). The Critic even adds a disclaimer from one of Dan's scenes which reads "Brought to You by the Leftover Racism from Transformers 2".
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: When Dex gives a Kirk Summation of Lady X's plan, the Critic adds M. Night Shyamalan saying this, implying that even he would call bullshit on the explanation.
• Once More, with Clarity: The ending of the review puts the Critic's emotional breakdown at the beginning in context.
• Parental Bonus: The many blatant innuendos throughout the movie. Naturally, this is referenced.
  Critic: Like there's some grownup somewhere watching this movie with their kid saying, "Hmm. Well, I was going to turn this movie off and not expose my child to such a piece of shit, but then it acknowledged that I'm a pervert in a way that my kid won't understand. This movie gets me!"
• Precision F-Strike: The Critic's joke about Pixar sending terrible animation below their standards when they got outsourced with work on the climactic foodfight scene also has a letter from John Lasseter that simply reads "Go fuck yourselves!".
• Rapid-Fire "Shut Up!": The Critic screams this when, upon seeing the credits roll, he tries to wrap up his review, only to be interrupted by cutaways back to the film one too many times.
  "SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP, SHUT UP!! Every second you speak is killing something I used to love inside of me! Will you please just SHUT UP?!?! GOD!!!!! This is awful! IT'S AWFUL! I'd much rather read the credits like I'm reading a memorial of all the poor people who gave their life to this horribleness! All adding up to shit! $65 million of SHIT!!!"
• Sanity Slippage: What happens to the Critic by the end. It's worth noting that this was not simply from reviewing the movie (which merely left him in a bad mood) but from the revelation that everything he did was for nothing, as the intended trend of reviewing the film never caught on.
  • He also claims that this film must be the reason that Charlie Sheen is now insane.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Eventually it's revealed that the Foodfight review trend never took off as intended, leading to the Critic's Sanity Slippage.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Critic's Anger Montage is loosely based on that of Selina Kyle in Batman Returns, complete with a thinly-edited version of the "Selina Transforms" score from that scene.
  • When the Critic sarcastically suggests that the All-Star Castinvoked for this movie will still be relevant a decade after the original casting call, he then plays a clip of a man screaming "You'll be sorry!" to Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.
• Smash Cut: Near the end, as the Critic concludes his review, this happens:
  Critic: I know for a fact that this film will forever in the history books always be seen as...
  (cut to him back in the researchers' lab)
  Critic: (incredulously) passé?!
• Take That!:
  • Pondering on the terrible results of so expensive a project as Foodfight!, the Critic wondered if the producers were insane enough to hire Uwe Boll and Tommy Wiseau as accountants, implying there's a massive laundering scheme behind the film.
  • Within the film, the Critic believes that the ugly appearances of some mascots (e.g., Chiquita Banana, the Keebler Elves and Brawny Lumberjack) were a deliberate piss-take against the companies who refused to let Threshold use their mascots.
  • When he gets to Blue Sky Studios, another studio he claims was outsourced with animating the climactic foodfight scene (besides Pixar and DreamWorks Animation), the Critic claims that not only were they sincere in output, but even asked if they can turn it into a terrible franchise, before telling the viewer not to be too surprised should a crossover between Foodfight!, Ice Age and Rio actually happen.
  • Upon pondering how the movie came about, the Critic had an epiphany that only someone as horrendous, offensive and stereotypical as Jar Jar Binks could have directed something as equally horrendous, offensive and stereotypical as Foodfight!, causing him to send missiles to his house before he can create a sequel.
• Tempting Fate: After yet another horrible and annoying stereotype, the Critic challenges the movie to show 'ugliness in all its forms'. The movie more than delivers, with a baby that is so hideous it can only described as Arnold-baby and Loki-baby's lovechild and especially its mother, whose utterly disturbing, even worse looks than her child manages to break the Critic down immediately and have him plead for deliverance.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: In-Universe, this is how the Critic sees most scenes in the film. After the initial scenes of Mr. Clipboard, the review cuts to a skit in which Doug dons a wig and adapts Mr. Clipboard's awkward walk, flailing arms and disturbing facial expressions, then approaches Tamara and tries to sell her "Evil Poison Bites Death" (provides your business with the wholesome, attractive image of Satan's anus that it so desperately needs) to demonstrate just why you would run away from him if you met him for real. She knees him in the crotch twice.
• Worst. Whatever. Ever!: At the end of the review, Critic declares Foodfight! to be the worst animated film he's ever seen.

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Survival of the fittest, Leonard!