Foodfight!

Sausage party WISHES it turned out like this

this movie has 10 years of hard work and development put into it and multiple production companies involved you know that's the mark of a successful movie!

...it's even worse.

All evidence points to this animated film being contrived as a money-making scheme. "Hey, we can create a cheap CGI movie and make companies pay for the celeb voices in advance by inserting their brands in the film!"

The result is worse than crass, it's abominably bad. It's so bad that the film has been stuck in production limbo for a decade and it hasn't aged well. The CGI, the story and the one-liners (oh God, the one-liners...) all bear the mark of genuine and profound incompetence, a complete lack of even the most most rudimentary story-telling skills.

What passes for a narrative revolves around supermarket brands coming to life at night. Rex Dogtective (yeah, go ahead and try to laugh at that one), voiced by Charlie Sheen, mourns his lost love but must soon save his supermarket city from the evil, impersonal Brand X. With the help of ... ah, who cares?

Foodfight! will bore, offend and anger you at the same time, such is its unprecedented badness. Please don't watch it.

A true tragedy that will go down as one of, if not the, worst animation movies ever made!

Genre film producer and Vestron Pictures producer Lawrence Kasanoff tried to cash-in on the success of animated movies made by Pixar and Dreamworks in the mid 90's and early 2000's but he did it in the laziest possible way a kids film can turn out to be.

If it would have been released in 2003 as it was planned, it would probably be considered a bad, strange and awkward hack job but fate had different plans for this piece of garbage. It wasnt enough to be a bad product of its time, fate wanted it to be one of the worst films ever made by delaying the already flawed production for years and releasing this trash into the world.

When you mix a pandering producer who doesnt have much experience at directing, let alone animated features, with a bunch of annoyed underpaid animators, several production difficulties and straight up bad decisions you get... Foodfight.

The film was originally going to be animated to resemble a Looney Tunes cartoon but Kasanoff decided the film would use motion capture, a technique that clashes with the cartoony animation style he wanted. The result is the worst of both worlds. Characters are stiff with their movements but this is often interrupted with more flexible stretchy movements that arent executed properly because of the bad animation and feel completely out of place. Thats not taking into account the awful art direction, ugly 3D models, disgusting textures and generic designs.

When you try to make a project like this, you should at least be familiar with how the medium works, instead of making arbitrary decisions that will inevitably create troubles for you and your crew; there doesnt seem to be a consistent idea or vision for the film besides making it a commercial family picture for the lowest common denominator.

I remember in 2005, as a young child who was just being acquainted with the internet, learning about Lawrence Kasanoff's Foodfight!. The film seemed unlike anything I had ever heard of before, combining dozens of popular advertising mascots such as Mr. Clean, Chester Cheetah, Mrs. Buttersworth, and Charlie the Tuna into one film that would resemble Toy Story if its setting had been transferred to a supermarket. The story of the film is actually one of cinema and animation's most baffling stories of a film's time in development hell and still captivates me whenever I scour the internet looking for a summation of what exactly went on with the picture. The story is one of incredible ambition, controversy, and an unfathomably disappointing conclusion. If you're not familiar with the backstory, I'll give you a little rundown.

In 2001, director Lawrence Kasanoff, who was known for producing the Mortal Kombat films as well as a handful of TV adaptations on the franchise, announced an undertaking like no other - he was going to make an animated film under his own company Threshold Entertainment that focused on the events that would take place inside a supermarket when the lights would turn off. Kasanoff envisioned a spectacle like no other, centering on dozens of recognizable brand mascots that would fend off a new, evil brand that attempted to takeover the marketplace. Not only was a film planned, but merchandize-galore was in addition, with toys, stuffed animals, a potential web show, commercial tie-ins, fast food toys, books, and more were also planned to coincide with the film's release. Kasanoff called Threshold Entertainment "the next Pixar" and also banded together top animators from around the world to piece together a project with incredible ambition. The film was to be released in 2003.

So why is it that for a film this ambitious you probably haven't heard a damn thing about it? Well, for starters, the film's first immediate roadblock came in the form of a burglary in 2003 when hard drives containing the film, its animation, and its conceptual mockups were stolen. The animators and everyone assigned to the project needed to start from scratch. Nonetheless, Kasanoff pushed on with the project, confirming a release date of 2005.

Foodfight! never came out in 2005 and news of it became scarce and vague when it did manage to circulate. The release date was changed several times before finding itself up for auction in 2007 for a surprisingly low $2.5 million, given its ambition and $65 million budget. Finally, the film came out over a decade after it first hit production, in October 2012. It received a very limited theatrical release in Europe and a silent DVD/video-on-demand release in the States, effectively ending one of the most mindbogglingly convoluted chapters in animation history.

Now the question begs an answer, what does Foodfight! look like in its final state? The simple answer is "hell." This is a film that was clearly rushed upon being purchased at the aforementioned auction. The story concerns, as stated, a supermarket that turns into a playground for its product-mascots upon closing. The leader of this world is Dex Dogtective (voiced by Charlie Sheen), a crime-fighter who becomes incredibly suspicious of "Brand X," a new line of products that are hitting store shelves. Dex and his gang of friends Sunshine Goodness (Hilary Duff) and Daredevil Dan (Wayne Brady) prepare to keep the supermarket in their hands, but Dex increasingly finds himself distracted by the likes of Lady X (Eva Longoria), a desirable woman who keeps trying to win Dex's eye and the store manager finds himself dictated by Mr. Clipboard (Christopher Lloyd), who is enforcing Brand X.

To begin with, the animation is awful. This is animation that looks and moves like a broken Sims game on PlayStation. Never in my life did I think I'd call an animated film with so many colors and characters odious but that's exactly what it is. While the characters appear in a three-dimensional state, the backgrounds almost look two-dimensional, and worst, are almost indistinguishable in terms of what they're supposed to be. This is clearly animation that is not finished and was forced to be the finished product. Characters are very stiff when moving, have a peculiar coldness to their movements in addition, and many of them look grotesque and ugly.

Then there's the awful writing at hand here. One can sort of forgive the animation for looking terrible, seeing as, understandably, everyone's hands just wanted to be cleaned of this film, but with twelve years of production and a forced rewrite thanks to a burglary, you would think the writing would be marginally polished. And yet, Foodfight! bears so much sexual innuendo it's ungodly and very inappropriate for children (Daredevil Dan says to the sultry Lady X in one scene, "Oh Mamacita! Yo, sweetcakes, nice packaging! How about some chocolate frosting? I'd like to butter your muffin!"), Lady X boasts fetish-like lingerie as her primary outlets, orchestrating the fan-fiction version of her character, and characters speak almost entirely in grocery-store/food puns. There's no characters here, despite there being like thirty that are recognizable. There are just empty, hollow animated creations programmed to spew something that is allegedly funny.

Foodfight!'s existence and eventual outcome should be a warning to those who have an idea they see bold and ambitious opportunities for. Granted a burglary can't really be blamed on part of the writers and directors but an awful script, a premise that seems to exist solely as a corporate byproduct, fourth-rate animation, and incredibly unforgivable and unnecessary sexual innuendos can be. The fact that Foodfight! is a bad film is the least of its concerns; it's a morally, ethically, and visually reprehensible fiasco that scrapes the bottom of the barrel so forcefully that it's tearing a hole in its base.