Reviews WesternAnimation / Food Fight

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.