Cinemasterworks: "Foodfight!"

I like a good bad movie as much as the next guy.

The Room, Troll 2, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Battlefield Earth, Birdemic, Robot Monster- you name it, I love it.

But sometimes a movie goes beyond so-bad-it's-good. Beyond comprehension. Beyond belief. Beyond beyond.

Foodfight! is such a movie.

Please take two minutes out of your life and behold the trailer.

The whole movie looks like that.

Released in 2012, this film boasts a $45 million budget and voice work by Hillary Duff, Charlie Sheen, Eva Longoria, Christopher Lloyd, Jerry Stiller, Wayne Brady, and several other minor celebrities.

And it looks like a mid-90's CD-ROM video game.

On top of constant video glitches, every character looks and moves in a disturbingly fake way. Their eyes move in every direction and their bodies are constantly twitching. This film turns the uncanny valley into the uncanny Grand Canyon. The chocolate weasel is the only character with any texture, but unfortunately, it's the texture of a glistening turd. Very, very uncomfortable to watch.

The plot: grocery store food label icons come to life when grocery stores close as the whole place turns into an epic fantasy city full of these icons. All is well until the evil "Brand X" company invades the store with their generic products, and thus, the grocery city with their evil "Brand X" icons. As they arrive, they push our "beloved" food icons out of existence. And then there's a food fight.

The "Brand X" icons march and act and talk like Nazis. Horrifyingly like Nazis. Foodfight! presents endless imagery and re-enactments of Nazi rallies and speeches. In a PG kids' movie. Not to mention a final battle between the good guys and the food Nazis that goes on forever and ultimately feels as pulverizing as an overlong battle scene in a Hobbit movie.

It's not clear if there is a dimensional gateway in this grocery store opening up to the fantasy city, or if the grocery store transforms into this city, or if this situation is unique to this grocery store or happens in all grocery stores. We never even see the characters emerge from their labels, so how they come to life isn't clear.

There are actual food icons in this film- Mr. Clean, Mrs. Butterworth, Charlie the Tuna, the California Raisins- but they're relegated to odd cameos. All the main characters are fictional food icons, for some reason.

Not to mention that, unlike the similar Toy Story, we never see these fictional food icons in the film's "reality." Toy Story shows Andy playing with the toys, establishing their identity, and we see an advertisement for Buzz Lightyear to help us understand his deal. These were fictional toys, but the movie made them real within the context of the film with textual clues. No such luck in Foodfight! Example: the main character, voiced by Charlie Sheen, is a McGruff the Crime Dog-looking canine private detective who is apparently the icon for a cinnamon-flavored cereal. We never see an ad for the product. We never hear any humans discuss him. We never even see a box of the cereal before we meet this character in mid-action. It's totally random.

And the main character's catch phrase- "The secret is inside!"- is never explained. Not that this stops the film from using it over and over. Out of context.

There is a disturbing amount of hardcore sexual innuendo that's not technically vulgar, but breath-takingly nasty in its implications. Totally tone deaf. I realize some kids' movies throw adult humor in there for the parents, but this movie forgot to hire a writer capable of subtlety. This film's idea of humor is constant Casablanca references and non-stop lame food puns.

Speaking of the writers, it was written by the two screenwriters behind Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. If you liked Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, you will love Foodfight!

I sat aghast and baffled for the entirety of its 90-minute running time. My friend and I managed a wisecrack now and then, but were mostly left speechless, staring at each other in bewilderment. About every 10 seconds, something happened that made us audibly respond, "Huh?"

There are podcasts and websites dedicating to cataloging the train wreck of a production this movie went through- it's nicely summarized on Wikipedia.

But here's some highlights:
-The filmmakers wanted to do for grocery store items what Toy Story did for toys, solely because they wanted tie-in endorsement deals with food companies.
-Most of these deals fell through.
-Production was completed in 2003, but then the hard drives with the film were allegedly stolen, according to the director, in an act of "industrial espionage."
-The production floundered for years until declaring bankruptcy in 2011.
-It was auctioned off and the buyers invested as little money as possible to assemble the files into something resembling a film and they dumped the result direct to streaming in an attempt to break even.

This isn't a good movie, is what I'm getting at here. Please watch Foodfight! if you ever worry that you're getting too sane or too intelligent.


-Phony McFakename

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