Foodfight! is a train wreck in terms of animation, culinary arts, and star-studded voice actors, blending both ‘A-List Celebrities’ and ‘So Bad It’s Good’ Animated Films.” Released in 2012 and grossing only $65 million, the film showcases the unmatched voice talents of Charlie Sheen, Hilary Duff, Wayne Brady, Jerry Stiller, and others, all of whom were paid out of the casting budget.
The premise animators chose for Foodfight! was a supermarket-themed city entitled Marketopolis. Dex Dogtective, the main protagonist, is a cereal brand mascot voiced by none other than Charlie Sheen. Marketopolis is inhabited by brand mascots known as “Ikes,” or “icons.” which were former cereals. As the storyline progresses, it becomes clear that Dex has ulterior motives. Dex is also a womanizer, as he attempts to propose to his girlfriend, a raisin brand mascot named Sunshine Goddess. He ends up giving up his detective career after enduring endless futility in searching for his love interest.
We go back and forth between Marketopolis and “real world” supermarkets where the movie’s villain, Mr. Clipboard (Christoper Lloyd) is unveiling a new generic brand called Brand X. Ike Lady X (Eva Longoria), Brand X’s Ike, is peculiarly always seductive and somehow the only character who ever changes outfits. Lady X attempts to seduce Dex into Brand X, but spoilers, it doesn’t work. In a plot that you’ve probably guessed, Dex rallies everyone together in a fight against the Brand X army in, you guessed it, the titular food fight. (There is another food fight earlier in the overly-long run-time of the movie of an exhausting hour and thirty-one minutes, but this is not the titular food fight.)
For me the plot was by far the most uninteresting part of this movie and had me asking questions repeatedly on basically how something happened. The plot felt impossible to follow thanks to the horrifying animation and dialog, which, for a Wayne Brady as Daredevil Dan’s, a chocolate squirrel with so many innuendos the PG rating should probably be double-checked, made everything impossible to follow.
Mr. Clipboard appears to be the aged version of Dracula, while the pale-faced Daredevil Dan is an underwhelming squirrel impersonator. The peculiar creature I am trying to stifle breathing laughter it looks like he has the neck of a giraffe and fantasies of pulling it through my monitor.
Disregarding the glaring shortcomings, this movie had a whopping $65 million budget and didn’t benefit from the voice acting talent during the peak period of animated films. Of course, we’re in the same era as The Bee Movie, Flushed Away, Over the Hedge, Shark Tales, and Open Season. Were food industry enthusiasts like director & writer Lawrence Kasanoff too late to the party? Most animated classics came out in 2006-2007, while Kasanoff opted to place this corpse of a film, FoodFight!, in 2012. Admittedly, the animation is devoid of creativity, the grim story, lackluster characters, and mediocre casting sing a slightly different tune; the real catastrophe is the execution. Kasanoff’s sole credited writing work is on the 1997 installment of the cult classic Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, where he took the backseat as producer for the other entries, earning a glorious rating of 3.6/10 on IMDb. While that’s a stellar achievement compared to Kasanoff’s post-child, post-mortem Moneyfight! As I mentioned earlier, the movie is surprising in its lack of any redeeming features.
However, the Foodfight! lore is more intricate than that in terms of timing ‘the movie was in production for over a decade’. Kasanoff aimed to release the animated feature under his company, Threshold Entertainment, by 2003. Foodfight! was able to attract real brand mascots such as Mrs. Buttersworth and Mr. Clean, which made marketing quite easier during its initial stages.
Every aspect was looking good until the year 2003. The hard drives that contained all the animations alongside the film were stolen, forcing the animators to start everything from scratch. By 2007, the rights were sold at an auction for $2.5 million, which many consider an insult for how much effort went into the work. The world was subjected to the disaster known as Foodfight! in 2012. The amount of sympathy I have for the animators whose work was stolen is abundant, but there comes a point when too much sympathy is not warranted, especially for anyone involved in releasing this abomination to the public. While it may not be a good movie, it does make for a fun movie to watch with friends.
In my opinion, the only highlight from Foodfight! is the soundtrack, but “It’s Our World” which plays at the beginning of the movie remains a personal favorite. The tunes are ‘sorrowfully’ memorable, and the only things other than the Bone-Chilling animation that I could recall a day after watching were the songs. Food puns and jokes are plentiful in the script (I’m gonna pop your corn, lady, Holy chips), but to be fair, I may have experienced the entire movie in a state of shock, and I’m still not sure if those lines were funny or not.
To answer the question “Why would I want to watch this?” If you want to think about how something so horrendously put together could ever get released, this is the movie for you. If you are an artist and want to feel better about yourself, this is the movie for you. If you want to hear a soundtrack that I am listening to unironically while writing this review, this is the movie for you. You might get traumatized by the animation and confused about the plot, but it’s a movie.
To watch more movies visit Fmovies
Also Watch for more movies like:
