Movie Review: Foodfight!

Foodfight!

C47 Productions, Lions Gate Family Entertainment, Natural Image, StoryArk Media, Threshold Digital Research Labs, Threshold Entertainment, USA, 2012.

Hey, this one is on IMDB's lowest rated movies list, this ought to be good!

At night Marketropolis Market turns into a city where brand icons or Ikes come to life. Mix of Indiana Jones and Rick from "Casablanca" Dex Dogtective (Charlie Sheen) fights some hamster and rat gangsters. He works for Supermarket Defense Association protecting the personified brands living in the city. and plans to marry Sunshine Goodness (Hilary Duff). Dex's best friend is Daredevil Dan (Wayne Brady). Sunshine Goodness disappears.

Dex Dogtective

Daredevil Dan

Sunshine Goodness

Mr. Clipboard (Christopher Lloyd) representative of Brand X- company wants to persuade the shops to sell their products. Ministry of Silly Walks were amateurs compared to this dude. Kaptain Krispy (George Johnsen) is angry because Mr. Clipboard stomped on his potato chips. Lady X (Eva Longoria) tries to seduce Rex.

Mr Clipboard

Lady X

Lieutenant X

Ikes start getting killed. All the dead brands are replaced with Brand X. Evil General X (Jerry Stiller) and Lady X assume dictatorship to protect the brands. They want to take over the world with their X-obyte robot mosquito army. Lady X goes into full Nazi-dominatrix mode and tries to eliminate undesirable brands. Bex and Dan must stop the invasion by going into the real world. They meet also chocolate vampire Vlad Chocool (Larry Miller). Rex raises resistance to fight the evil Brand X. The Ike-army throws food at the bad guys, every food item explodes into similar looking blobs.

Not very subtle allegory

Brand X Lunch Lady

Where is that crown attached?

The film had a $65 million budget. Probably most of the money went to pay voice actors salaries as the animation looks cheaper than Saturday morning TV-animations. The hard drives containing the original video material were reportedly stolen and the production had to be started again. As the release dates went over the film rights were finally acquired by an insurance company who wanted the film finished as quick and cheap as possible. Still the bad animation is just one of the many problems as the jokes are terrible and the script is appalling. There is a trailer online that shows some of the pre-theft material that looks marginally better:

Seriously many characters look like the unfinished storyboard animations that are given as DVD-extras. But not only the crudeness of the background characters but also the ugliness of some of the main characters sticks in the eye like a sore thumb. The colours look like someone puked after eating colourful jellybeans. I guess they tried to imitate the Looney Tunes and Tex Avery cartoons, but the poor quality of the animation makes it pure nightmare fuel. Check the character Cheasel T. Weasel (Lawrence Kasanoff) if you do not believe.

Cheasel T. Weasel

Mr. Clean and Mrs. Butterworth

Notice the copy&paste characters

There are couple of random fun ideas like ketchup-bottle tanks. The product placement is plentiful with many well known company mascots including Mr. Clean, Charlie Tuna and Mrs. Butterworth's syrup lady, but even they are lazily used. Impossible to say how much damage they made to the actual brands. The dialogue is full of sexual innuendo that will make adults' ears red: “I didn’t even get a chance to play lick the icing with Sweet Cakes.” Of course there are fart jokes and general grossness.

Even humans are ugly

Food warfare

What a mess

The lessons to be learned: 

1. Generic products are bad and brands are good. 

2. Ugly equals bad. 

3. Chicks dig chocolate. 

This is so horrible that it is awesome. Recommended viewing for bad movie connoisseurs but kids could get scarred for life. 

Rating: So bad it is good

Voice actors: Charlie Sheen, Hilary Duff, Eva Longoria, Wayne Brady, Christopher Lloyd, Chris Kattan, Larry Miller, Edward Asner, Jerry Stiller, Christine Baranski, Lawrence Kasanoff, Harvey Fierstein, Cloris Leachman, Haylie Duff, Shelley Morrison, Edie McClurg, George Johnsen, Jonny Rees, James Arnold Taylor, Robert Costanzo, Jeff Bennett, Stephen Stanton, Jeff Bergman, Karen Gallo Messore, Sean Catherine Derek, Enn Reitel, Daniel Franzese, Eliza Schneider, Jason Ortenberg, Zachary Liebrich-Johnsen, Andrew Ortenberg, Jennifer Keith, Joshua Wexler, Jason Harris, Greg Eagles, Melissa Disney, Bob Bergen, Susan Silo, Daniel Bernhardt, John Bloom
Director: Lawrence Kasanoff