PLOT: After 2016’s Sausage Party, most humans are dead, and food has become the dominant species. With no clue as to how to govern a new world and sustain a manufactured utopia, the system begins to break down. With failure looming and perishables in danger of surpassing their expiration dates, Frank (Seth Rogen), Brenda (Kristen Wiig), and Barry (Michael Cera) enlist one of the last remaining humans to help guide them toward democracy. All is going according to plan until an orange named Julius reshapes society in his twisted image. With little choice but to fight back, the biggest food fight in the history of foodkind ignites.
REVIEW: Where do I begin? Are you like me in that you enjoy dark and absurdist comedy? You are? Oh good! You might have a blast with Sausage Party: Foodtopia, a continuation of 2016’s Sausage Party, so depraved and bizarre that you could start questioning how you’re spending your precious time on the one life you have to live. Understand this. I would give anything to have been a fly when Seth Rogen and friends pitched the concept for Foodtopia. I imagine the meeting going a little something like this:
“Hey, Amazon! Do you remember back in 2016 when we made an adult-rated animated comedy about sentient food that fights and f**ks its way to freedom? What if we did that again, but this time, it’s a clever political satire about the pitfalls of establishing a new society? Oh, and don’t worry, there’s still plenty of food-on-food action. I’m not kidding. One scene we’ve written is so depraved you’ll probably ask us to issue a warning before the episode airs. How does that sound?” Insert Seth Rogen’s signature laugh here.
I’ll say this for Sausage Party: Foodtopia, director Conrad Vernon, Seth Rogen, and his merry band of talented friends go above and beyond to present a story that’s both impossible and entirely relatable that you might never look at your dinner the same way again. The thing about building a society is you need to establish rules. Without rules, there is no order, only chaos. Frolicking and f**king the days away is the dream, but eventually, you wake up.
You’ll notice immediately that Sausage Party: Foodtopia looks like its theatrical predecessor. The fidelity of the sentient frankfurters and voluptuous buns remains intact, making the series look and feel like a direct continuation of the original story. Without spoiling too much about the series, Sausage Party: Foodtopia is everything you think it is, but it’s also clever, subversive, and bold in depicting a crumbling society and how power corrupts absolutely.
Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, and Michael Cera don’t miss a beat while slipping back into the roles of Frank, Brenda, and Barry, respectively. I enjoyed Wiig and Cera’s performances, especially with both actors pouring every ounce of voice talent into walking, talking, action-ready warriors of the new world. Edward Norton is a standout as Sammy, the self-serving bagel with an appetite for superstardom. He’s the type of character you love to hate, and there were moments when I wished a bird would swoop down and carry his Woody Allen-adjacent ass into the horizon.
Meanwhile, Sam Richardson plays Julius the Orange, a villain whose corruption knows no end as he strives to expand his empire and influence over the populace of what remains of Foodtopia. What starts as a simple property dispute evolves into bribery on a grand scale when Julius begins amassing human teeth, a new form of currency in a struggling Foodtopia. With more teeth and power than any other citizen in Foodtopia, Julius challenges Frank and Brenda to a political standoff for control over the new world. While Frank and Brenda want to implement fair systems with checks and balances, Julius aims to rule Foodtopia with an iron fist. To get what he wants, Julius builds an army of loyal followers who cater to his every whim and praise his every edict. For some, the plot could hit too close to home.
Each episode of Sausage Party: Foodtopia is less than 30 minutes, making each installment a quick jaunt to the food aisle for a bite-sized amount of comedy and guilt-ridden laughs. Do you like puns? I hope so because Foodtopia offers a veritable smorgasbord of food-related jokes, visual “chicken fat,” and celebrity cameos in the form of food product lookalikes with clever names to match. Are you ready for The Talking Breads to perform their chart-topping hit, “Turn Us Into Toast?” What if we change Heart’s “Baracuda” lyrics into a catchy tune that delivers plot narrative and inventive wordplay? What I’m trying to say is Sausage Party: Foodtopia has more songs about food than “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “The Food Album.”
How absurd is Sausage Pary: Foodtopia? Do you remember how, in the original film, Frank takes control of the supermarket manager, Darren, by inserting himself into his anus and pulling on his scrotum to puppeteer him like Remy does Linguini in Pixar’s Ratatouille? Foodtopia takes this outrageous concept to the next level thanks to Jack (Will Forte), one of the last humans left alive in the foodpocalypse. Barry wants to kill Jack, but Frank and Brenda see the value in keeping a human around as a source of information about a world that’s foreign to them. More than once, others pilot Jack to help do their business, and some viewers won’t be prepared for how Jack’s relationship with the trio evolves.
I’m almost ashamed to admit how much I enjoyed Sausage Party: Foodtopia. Almost. Are the jokes a garden of low-hanging fruit? Mostly. Did I question my life choices as I binged all eight episodes to write this review? Absolutely? Would I do it all again? If I had a friend who was Sausage Party curious, you bet your ass I would.
What kills me about the series is that it’s adept at portraying political satire by using food groups as stand-ins for people of different means in our actual society. Rich food acquires all the teeth (money), while Perishable food suffers in poverty, rotting from the inside out without access to refrigerators or freezers (healthcare). The frontrunner of the political struggle is an orange hellbent on controlling the populace with Western American capitalist ideals. Things even get comedically existential as Jack contemplates the nature of conscious food. Where does life begin for them? Is water alive? Is it considered food before it’s bottled and sent to the store? Before tackling this, I suggest procuring some Devil’s Lettuce from Seth Rogen’s Houseplant label.
Many people said, “No one asked for this,” when Prime Video announced Sausage Party: Foodtopia. Do you know who asked for this? I did. I like the idea of living in a world where someone can produce something so dumb, depraved, and brilliant all at once. I don’t know if animation pioneers ever imagined food items fighting and fornicating their way onto the small screen to expose the failings of human society, but here we are.
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