When happy-looking mascots turn Darker and Edgier.
Imagine a Product Placement film. As in, it's a film made up entirely of product placement.
Logorama is a short animated French film released in 2009, directed by Francois Alaux, Hervé de Crecy, and Ludovic Houplain. Although the film was made in France, the dialogue is entirely in English.
Running 17 minutes long, the film takes place in a world where corporate logos make up the scenery, and mascots are the citizens. Two cops — all the cops are Michelin Men — go on a high-speed chase against an armed robber who turns out to be none other than Ronald McDonald. The chase ends up with Ronald crashing his truck and taking hostages inside a diner; the hostages include a Bob's Big Boy
◊ child and an Esso's Oil Drop Girl
◊ waitress.
Compare to the feature-length Foodfight!.
Logorama provides examples of:
- Apocalypse How: Class 0; as the trope listed immediately below indicates at the end, there is evidently an entire universe populated by logos out there which seems to be otherwise fine.
- Astronomic Zoom: Inverted at the end, where following the city-wide apocalypse, the camera pans outwards at a great speed showing Earth, then zooming past other planets, ending with a zoom out from the Milky Way.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Few of the more prominent characters are particularly pleasant individuals, with Big Boy and Haribo Boy in the category of Enfant Terrible and Ronald being spun as the The Sociopath. The Michelin Man cops have apparent Destructive Saviour tendencies, and even the less prominent Pringles Men's appearances are lecherous and rude. Esso Girl is leagues better than most of the other characters, going out of her way to save Big Boy.
- Bond Gun Barrel: When Ronald kills a Michelin cop.
- The Cameo: Pringles Original is voiced by David Fincher, the accomplished live-action film director.
- Camp Gay: Mr. Clean, the tour guide at the zoo, is very, very campy.
- Cel Shading: The standard flat colors and sharp shadows.
- Decoy Protagonist: The two Michelin Man cops appear to be being set up as the main characters, but Big Boy and Esso Girl have taken over by the end.
- Diabolus ex Machina: The shootout/hostage situation between Ronald McDonald and the Michelin cops is short-circuited by an earthquake that comes out of nowhere and plunges the entire town into the sea. (The closing Astronomic Zoom reveals that Baja California has been turned into an island shaped like the Nike logo.)
- Enfant Terrible: Big Boy and Haribo Boy.
- Escaped Animal Rampage: After the earthquake starts, all the animals run out of the zoo and into the city. The Green Giant tries to stop them, but he gets caught on one of the Republican Party elephant logos.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: The entirety of Logo Island is swallowed beneath the waves in an earthquake/gigantic oil spill; a scant few people are shown in the end to have made it to the tallest rooftops which remain afloat, while the only confirmed specific survivors are Big Boy, Esso Girl and (thanks to The Stinger) Ronald.
- Expy: Ronald McDonald acts as one for Heath Ledger's The Joker.
- Flipping the Bird: One of the Michelin policemen give this when chasing Ronald.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: It can be quite fun to pause the movie and point out all the logos in the scenery.
- Hollywood Police Driving Academy: The Michelin cops go on a reckless, extremely dangerous high-speed chase after Ronald, which includes running into and killing two M&M's crossing the street. (A chunk of M&M hits their windshield.)
- Jumpscare: Right at the very end of The Stinger, we see a presumed-dead Ronald pop out of nowhere and laugh as a reference to a K-fee commercial.
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: For advertising mascots.
- Monster Clown: Ronald McDonald, a psychopathic armed robber and murderer.
- Practically Joker: Ronald McDonald, Big Time.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: "Hello, asshole!"
- Pretty Little Headshots: When Ronald shoots one of the Michelin policemen in the head, it lets out a clean bullet-shaped hole with no blood coming out of the wound.
- Product Placement: All over the place.
- Scenery Porn: The entire city of logos, especially in panoramic shots.
- Shout-Out:
- Fictional brands Slurm and Buy N Large appear.
- The South Park, Ghostbusters, Sesame Street, COPS, Batman, James Bond, Grease 2, Street Fighter II, The Empire Strikes Back and Left 4 Dead logos, all appear.
- At the zoo, the train the Bic students, alongside Big Boy and Haribo Boy, are riding on is the logo for My First Thomas, a Thomas & Friends toy line made specifically for babies and toddlers.
- Also, the logos for Gorillaz, Green Day, Pink Floyd's The Wall, The Clash, Daft Punk, Public Enemy, Sex Pistols, AC/DC, Run–D.M.C., Fatboy Slim and Iron Maiden can be seen.
- The Stinger: After the credits roll, a bald, cross-eyed Ronald with missing teeth appears out of nowhere.Ronald: Ehhahaha I'm lovin' it.
- Unexplained Recovery: In The Stinger, Ronald McDonald is revealed to be alive after he's last shown being run over by a car driven by Esso Girl while he held onto the edge of the crevasse during the earthquake. He somehow survived getting run over and only lost his hair, got a black eye, became cross-eyed, and lost some of his teeth.
- Visual Pun: Many. Mr. Peanut gets shot through the head by a sniper bullet, shattering his peanut shell, causing the peanut inside to spill out onto the floor of the diner.
- Wasn't That Fun?: After driving off the highway, speeding down a hill and crashing into a tree, Big Boy says "Awesome!"
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: Several things in the story are left behind when the earthquake starts.
- Would Hurt a Child: Ronald knocks out the Haribo boy with his foot (probably killing him), before taking Big Boy hostage, and later, tries to shoot him.
