The premise ofSausage Partyfelt stretched thin in a feature-length film. It’s a fun R-rated parody of the Pixar formula, butthere’s only so much comedic mileage you’re able to get out of talking foods saying curse words and performing debaucherous sex acts on each other. Now that we’re in the second season of the spinoff streaming series,Sausage Party: Foodtopia, that premise has been stretched paper-thin.In season 2,Sausage Party: Foodtopiacontinues season 1’s story of the foods trying to rebuild society after overthrowing the human race.
As the foods set out to rebuild the world in season 1, their utopian democracy was threatened by the rise of a fascist orange called Julius. He was named after Julius Caesar, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out who this spherical orange dictator was based on. Season 2 is less directly analogous to real-world politics, as Frank is exiled from Foodtopia and discovers a food paradise with a hidden dark side. It touches on slavery and the class system, butnever in enough depth to say anything substantial.
The original movie was a light satire of religion in which the anthropomorphic food questioned their blind belief that paradise awaited them in “The Great Beyond” when a grocery purchase survivor reported the horrors of humanity’s dietary habits. It wasn’t the deepest exploration of religion, but it provided a solid satirical framework on which to build food puns and supermarket slapstick.The TV show has been much less focused, tackling much broader ideas surrounding government and social structures without a clear comedic perspective.Rick and Morty’s makies/takies episodesaid more about society in one episode thanFoodtopiadoes in eight.
Sausage Party: Foodtopia’s Voice Cast Carries The Show
Edward Norton’s Woody Allen Impression Does A Lot Of Heavy Lifting
The voice actors continue to carry the series. The laughs are sparse, the storytelling is lightweight, and the animation is bland and uninspired, but the cast all give fantastic performances. Kristen Wiig is gone after her character Brenda was killed off in season 1, but the series still has Seth Rogen and Michael Cera as a pair of wieners, and Will Forte as a clumsy human survivor whose bath salt addiction allows him to communicate with the food.
The laughs are sparse, the storytelling is lightweight, and the animation is bland and uninspired, but the cast all give fantastic performances.
Season 2’s ensemble is made up of welcome newcomers, like Martin Starr as an erotic cake, and returning icons, likeEdward Nortondoing a spot-on Woody Allen impression as the neurotic Sammy Bagel, Jr. Since they’re working with derivative writing and animation that isn’t particularly interesting to look at,the voice cast is really the only thing that makes this show watchable.
Foodtopia Doesn’t Have Enough Laughs To Justify 4 Hours Of Content
Maybe This Premise Can’t Sustain A Full TV Series
It’s not all bad. The season has some great needle-drops from Santana and Pat Benatar, anda few decent gags, especially when Sammy gets mixed into the film industry, rubs shoulders with Spike Leek and Quentin Jalapeño, and turns the events of the original movie into a four-hour swords-and-sandals epic. But the season is full of weirdly outdated references to Oprah’s car giveaway,the Will Smith Oscars slap, and even Friends’ “We were on a break!” catchphrase, and it doesn’t have nearly enough laughs to justify another four hours of content.
Sausage Party: Foodtopiais streaming on Prime Video.
With itsWalking Dead-like story of warring factions in a post-apocalyptic wasteland,Sausage Party: Foodtopia’s latest outing ultimately carries the same bleak, dystopian message as the first season: there’s no way to run a functioning society without tyrannical oppressors making a certain section of the population suffer so another certain section can live in luxury. And that’s not just bad because it rehashes season 1; it’s bad because it’s not true, andit’s definitely not a message the world needs to hear right now, even in the form of a vulgar cartoon about talking hot dogs.
