Sausage Party: Foodtopia (Miniseries) review

SAUSAGE PARTY: FOODTOPIA: 

A NOT-SO-TASTY SECOND COURSE! 

By Nico Beland

Series Review: ** out of 4

AMAZON PRIME VIDEO AND SONY PICTURES TELEVISION

Frank, Brenda, Barry, and Sammy Bagel Jr. are back in Sausage Party: Foodtopia

 

            Frank, Brenda, and the rest of the living, talking food from the Shopwell’s supermarket are back in Sausage Party: Foodtopia, a new eight-episode miniseries sequel to the 2016 adult animated hit film, Sausage Party. Despite the poor working conditions that went on during the film’s production, I thought Sausage Party was hilarious and a surprisingly clever satire on religion with the food essentially seeing humans as Gods that will take them to a magical place known as the Great Beyond…obviously, if you know anything about humans and food that is not the case when food items are chosen from the supermarket. 

            The movie often made me think back to adult animated shows like South Park where within its lowbrow humor and profanity, there’s a large amount of thought-provoking themes and social commentary that make you think while you laugh. I thought the Sausage Party movie did that very well and apparently a lot of people thought the same thing because not only did it earn positive reviews from critics and was a box-office success, but it even dethroned 1999’s South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut as the highest-grossing R-rated animated movie of all time and held that spot until Demon Slayer: Mugen Train was released four years later. 

            Now, we have this sequel miniseries released on Prime Video once again written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Superbad, This is the End, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem) and featuring many of the same voice actors reprising their roles from the film as well as one of the film’s directors Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2, Monsters VS Aliens, The Addams Family 1 and 2 (Animated)) returning to direct. I was definitely interested when the project was announced especially after the film ended with the characters realizing they’re animated characters and they go through a stargate to the real world. 

            But then the trailer came out and it seemed like they were not going to follow the cliffhanger ending from the movie up as it showed the foods wiping out most of the human race until they’re the dominant species on the planet. Well, okay then I guess I can live with that just as long as the material is funny and the series can live up to the surprise brilliance of the film…sadly, that’s not really the case here. 

            I’m not saying this series is terrible as I laughed a fair amount of times during the eight episodes, but this is nowhere near as clever or thought-provoking as the film it was based on. This is probably what most people were expecting when the trailer for the movie first came out, excessive shock humor that pushes the envelope for how far they can go with it that can sometimes be funny and other times can just be fucking disgusting. 

            After standing up to the human race following the events of the film, Frank (voiced by Rogen), Brenda (voiced by Kristen Wiig-Bridesmaids, The Looney Tunes Show, Despicable Me franchise), and their friends establish a safe haven for food called Foodtopia. But when a massive flood destroys their once promised land, they must team up with a human (voiced by Will Forte-Saturday Night Live, Clone High, Strays) to ensure the survival of their race…oh, and Gum and Kareem Abdul-Lavash are dead now and Teresa Del Taco isn’t even mentioned! 

            The series also features the voices of Michael Cera (Superbad, Scott Pilgrim VS the World, The Lego Batman Movie) reprising his role as Barry, Edward Norton (Fight Club, The Incredible Hulk, Moonrise Kingdom) reprising his role as Sammy Bagel Jr., Sam Richardson (Veep, Detroiters, Promising Young Woman) as a tyrannical orange named…Julius (Get it? That’s…very clever!), and Stephanie Beard (The Zone, 50/50, The Flash) as Jeri Rice. 

            Overall, Sausage Party: Foodtopia has some laughs and it is nice to see some of the characters from the film again, but without the clever storytelling and social commentary from the movie, it really pales in comparison and you’re mostly just left with excessive shock humor and attempts at themes on politics and I don’t think the latter works very well for this franchise. It made sense to have a religious theme in the movie because if food actually had a conscious they probably would perceive humans as Gods that will take them to a better place when they’re picked out which also made the reality all the more horrifying from their perspective, it was genuinely effective and handled well there. 

            Here, it’s just issues like which food is going to be the mayor of Foodtopia and how are food going to live in a town when problems only humans know about occur. These are the kinds of things shows like South Park, The Simpsons, or even Family Guy would discuss and satirize and they’re usually handled a lot better in those shows because the characters are humans satirizing current events and making topical jokes. 

Because all the characters are food here there’s a big disconnect between the show and audience and it’s nowhere near as effective as the writers and creators probably hoped for. Maybe if the writing had more thought put into it and more along the lines of the religious satire from the film then perhaps we could have had something here, but as is it just makes you want to watch other adult animated shows that handle topical humor much better. 

There are some moments where I laughed and where some of the cleverness from the movie shines, the idea of the food characters using human teeth as currency is pretty funny, the human Frank and Brenda kidnap questioning the logic between food life and asks if the bottle itself is alive or the water inside, and them not understanding the “You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs” metaphor. I wish there was more of this and less human and sausage fucking…that’s not a joke by the way! 

They also do things to a couple characters in the show that I am very much against especially since I was invested in these characters in the film. One I was able to excuse a little bit because it’s part of an arc for this specific character, but the fate of another character towards the end really rubbed me the wrong way and the choice got worse the more I thought about it. 

Aside from a few moments of cleverness and genuine laughs, Sausage Party: Foodtopia is a middling miniseries based on a great movie that I can only recommend to people who enjoyed the movie and are curious to know what happens next. Personally, I’ll just stick with the film which is significantly funnier and much smarter than most of this entire eight episode miniseries.