When I was a kid, I’d spend hours and hours playing Nintendo 64. It did a great job of entertaining seven-year-old Brian with colorful, fun, vibrant games. I went back and played some last summer in a bout of stress-induced nostalgia, and it was terrifying. Unlike the charming 8-bit era or modern hyper-realistic games, late 90s video games are crude, poorly animated, and firmly entrenched in the uncanny valley; when something looks and acts almost, but not quite, like a human, it’s repulsive and uncomfortable to watch. I guess I was too young to pick up on the horror in the late 90s. I bring this up because Foodfight! is essentially a ninety-minute long N64 cut scene. You’d never believe that something this ugly could exist in this Pixar era, but the team behind Foodfight! managed to pull it off. Even without its disgusting double-entendres and cringe-inducing Nazi overtones, this film would be a goldmine of unintentional humor, but Foodfight! has so much more to be repulsed by to the point where there is nothing you can do but laugh.
When the supermarket closes and everybody goes home for the night, all of the food mascots come to life. This is a completely original idea and has never been done before. Ever. We’re introduced to Dex Dogtective, an anthropomorphic dog that wears a trenchcoat and fedora. He maintains order in this weird little food society by fighting crime and catching criminals in the most stereotypical way possible. One day, the store is filled with Brand X products, which become so popular that all of the other brands in the store are discontinued in favor of the Brand X counterparts, which means that the mascots that inhabit this world can disappear without a trace. Dex and his friends, all brand icons, have to face the Brand X mascots and stop them from recalling the entire city.
To begin, the entire voice cast for Foodfight! is straight out of Irrelevancevile. We’ve got Dex, a mascot for… something. They never actually say what he’s doing in a supermarket, but he’s the main character so we’ll roll with it. And he’s voiced by Charlie Sheen. His girlfriend is Sunshine Goodness, a raisin mascot that’s basically a girl with cat ears that has nothing to do with raisins voiced by Hilary Duff. I’m almost positive that was the first time you’ve seen her name in print in years. Wayne Brady is Daredevil Dan, a chocolate squirrel with a biplane that does stunts and markets some kind of chocolate product. Brady does his best stereotypical black guy voice, which is only the tip of this massively offensive iceberg. Lady X is the main mascot for Brand X and, like Sunshine Goodness, is basically a normal woman. However, she’s the most scantily clad and sexualized children’s cartoon character since Jessica Rabbit and has the deadest eyes you’ve ever seen on an animated character. Eva Longoria lends her voice to the role without any semblance of emotion whatsoever. I don’t know if it makes Foodfight! look worse for choosing such sad celebrities or these actors for choosing to work on such a horrible movie.
When Brand X starts to gain traction in the grocery market, Lady X brings a lot of henchmen into the fold with her to run the Brand X… Empire? Army? Something? The metaphor that Foodfight! is based on falls apart immediately. Her henchmen wear elaborate uniforms with giant hats, insignias, and stark iconography. Lots of red and black. They are seen clubbing other mascots in dark alleyways. Lady X holds a rally later in the movie: “There are only two kinds of product icons: desirable, like me, and undesirable. We must send all the undesirables where they belong: the Expiration Station. Look around! Do you see an ike with an inferior product? Turn in the undesirables! Join Brand X for a better way of life! Soon we will become the model of excellence until the entire world is just like us!” The whole movie, the mascots refer to themselves as “ikes” because it’s short for icons, but doesn’t it sound really, really similar to a Jewish slur? It’s sickening how much influence they took from the Nazis to create the Brand X look and feel. Hell, look at this logo they have for themselves. There are so many horribly stereotyped characters, from a kimono dragon that speaks broken Chinglish to a French Revolution-era cheese ike to Wayne Brady’s chocolate squirrel. There’s nothing clever or meaningful about it, though they do try to squeeze a few jokes out of these stereotypes. Most of them involve some sort of farting or sneezing gross-out humor, but none of them are even remotely funny.
The movie climaxes with a food fight (clever, right?) where all of the good ikes throw a ton of food at the Brand X army as they goosestep their way through the aisles. Good triumphs over Nazis. Honestly, I’ve only scratched the surface of Foodfight!; it has the worst soundtrack I’ve ever heard in a movie, puns that not even the most punny dad would dare make, shots where the camera swoops around and around for no reason whatsoever, shameless product placement, and this. Foodfight! is hilarious. If you can stomach it and have friends that are just as masochistic about movies as you are, you’ll have a fantastic time.
This article is part of NUFEC's Bad Movies series. Find Foodfight! on YouTube here and Amazon here.
When the supermarket closes and everybody goes home for the night, all of the food mascots come to life. This is a completely original idea and has never been done before. Ever. We’re introduced to Dex Dogtective, an anthropomorphic dog that wears a trenchcoat and fedora. He maintains order in this weird little food society by fighting crime and catching criminals in the most stereotypical way possible. One day, the store is filled with Brand X products, which become so popular that all of the other brands in the store are discontinued in favor of the Brand X counterparts, which means that the mascots that inhabit this world can disappear without a trace. Dex and his friends, all brand icons, have to face the Brand X mascots and stop them from recalling the entire city.
To begin, the entire voice cast for Foodfight! is straight out of Irrelevancevile. We’ve got Dex, a mascot for… something. They never actually say what he’s doing in a supermarket, but he’s the main character so we’ll roll with it. And he’s voiced by Charlie Sheen. His girlfriend is Sunshine Goodness, a raisin mascot that’s basically a girl with cat ears that has nothing to do with raisins voiced by Hilary Duff. I’m almost positive that was the first time you’ve seen her name in print in years. Wayne Brady is Daredevil Dan, a chocolate squirrel with a biplane that does stunts and markets some kind of chocolate product. Brady does his best stereotypical black guy voice, which is only the tip of this massively offensive iceberg. Lady X is the main mascot for Brand X and, like Sunshine Goodness, is basically a normal woman. However, she’s the most scantily clad and sexualized children’s cartoon character since Jessica Rabbit and has the deadest eyes you’ve ever seen on an animated character. Eva Longoria lends her voice to the role without any semblance of emotion whatsoever. I don’t know if it makes Foodfight! look worse for choosing such sad celebrities or these actors for choosing to work on such a horrible movie.
When Brand X starts to gain traction in the grocery market, Lady X brings a lot of henchmen into the fold with her to run the Brand X… Empire? Army? Something? The metaphor that Foodfight! is based on falls apart immediately. Her henchmen wear elaborate uniforms with giant hats, insignias, and stark iconography. Lots of red and black. They are seen clubbing other mascots in dark alleyways. Lady X holds a rally later in the movie: “There are only two kinds of product icons: desirable, like me, and undesirable. We must send all the undesirables where they belong: the Expiration Station. Look around! Do you see an ike with an inferior product? Turn in the undesirables! Join Brand X for a better way of life! Soon we will become the model of excellence until the entire world is just like us!” The whole movie, the mascots refer to themselves as “ikes” because it’s short for icons, but doesn’t it sound really, really similar to a Jewish slur? It’s sickening how much influence they took from the Nazis to create the Brand X look and feel. Hell, look at this logo they have for themselves. There are so many horribly stereotyped characters, from a kimono dragon that speaks broken Chinglish to a French Revolution-era cheese ike to Wayne Brady’s chocolate squirrel. There’s nothing clever or meaningful about it, though they do try to squeeze a few jokes out of these stereotypes. Most of them involve some sort of farting or sneezing gross-out humor, but none of them are even remotely funny.
The movie climaxes with a food fight (clever, right?) where all of the good ikes throw a ton of food at the Brand X army as they goosestep their way through the aisles. Good triumphs over Nazis. Honestly, I’ve only scratched the surface of Foodfight!; it has the worst soundtrack I’ve ever heard in a movie, puns that not even the most punny dad would dare make, shots where the camera swoops around and around for no reason whatsoever, shameless product placement, and this. Foodfight! is hilarious. If you can stomach it and have friends that are just as masochistic about movies as you are, you’ll have a fantastic time.
This article is part of NUFEC's Bad Movies series. Find Foodfight! on YouTube here and Amazon here.
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