Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sausage Party: Foodtopia’ On Prime Video, Where Talking Food Learns How To Live As A Society — And Not Get Eaten

In 2016, Seth Rogen’s Sausage Party became one of the most successful R-rated animated films of all-time, and it was due to a positive message behind all the f-bombs and food sex. Eight years later, a new series serves as a sequel to the film and asks the inevitable question: What now?

SAUSAGE PARTY: FOODTOPIA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A piece of chewed gum (Scott “Diggs” Underwood) in a wheelchair appears. In a computerized voice, he tells the story of the original Sausage Party film, where anthropomorphic food got the better of humans that eat it, with the help of bath salts.

The Gist: We pick up in the middle of the battle at Shopwell’s, where the food runs out and takes on the “humeys” that cook and eat the food. Led by Frank the frankfurter (Seth Rogen), his girlfriend, hot dog bun Brenda (Kristen Wiig) and mutilated sausage Barry (Michael Cera), the food manages to violently kill any and all humans that get in their way. Their buddy Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton) is trying to help but also wants to keep his new love interest, Kareem Abdul Lavash (David Krumholtz) alive — but he’s quite dead.

After the victory, Frank and Brenda rally the crowd, letting them know that they can now do whatever they want. Barry celebrates, as well, but is agitated that there are no more battles to fight. The crowd takes its cue to do anything they want by having a lot of inter-food sexual relations, including Julius the orange (Sam Richardson) getting his navel licked by a succession of foods.

Then the rain starts coming down. Not knowing what the wet stuff coming from the “ceiling” outside the store means, the softer foods start dissolving. Then water starts running down the street and into a sewer grate, taking out a number of others. Gum sacrifices himself to save a bunch of the food.

The food that survives makes their way back to the supermarket, despite the fact that it’s crumbling, because they think it’s safer inside. Frank laments the fact that they killed all of the “humeys” that would have helped them figure out what that water was. On a search and rescue mission, Barry gets the shock of his life when he sees a human boating off with the food he rescued.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Sausage Party: Foodtopia is a sequel to the 2016 film Sausage Party, though there are shades of Ratatouille here as well.

Our Take: The original Sausage Party film was a hit because, even though Ariel Shaffir, Kyle Hunter, Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Jonah Hill made a story that was gleefully profane, there was still a positive and — god help us — wholesome message at its core. Foodtopia, developed by the same team minus Hill but adding Conrad Vernon, is quite a bit darker. And it’s also quite a bit less funny.

We get it: Now that the battle is over, what’ what’s next? It’s a question that’s been asked in movies and TV forever, and here it feels like the goodwill generated by the victory doesn’t last all that long. Firstly, the food’s limited scope leads them to think they killed all humans when there are billions more out there ready to eat them. Secondly, they have no idea how to conduct themselves in a free society, aside from lots of grotesque-looking sexual acts.

Eventually, Barry finds a human named Jack (Will Forte) and controls him via pulls on his scrotum, a gag that was funny in the original film but grows old quickly in the series. Frank and Brenda lean on him to figure out what life on the outside is like. But while that is going on, Julius and other not-so-friendly foodstuffs dominate the weaker and smaller foods as they find housing and try to govern themselves. It’s like Lord Of The Flies but with canned goods.

So, between the sex scenes, the tragic flood, the scrotum pulling and the asshole fruits getting the upper hand, we didn’t find all that much to laugh at, at least through the first couple of episodes.

Sex and Skin: We were quite surprised at what Rogen and company were able to get away with when we saw all the food having all that sex.

Parting Shot: Barry spies the “humey” that kidnapped all the food he rescued.

Sleeper Star: We’re not sure if we should laud Edward Norton for his pitch-perfect Woody Allen impression as Sammy Bagel Jr. or be offended by him. That’s the sign of a good performance.

Most Pilot-y Line: After the flood, a bottle of steak sauce screams, “Where’s the beef?” looking for his steak lover, Wellington. Do we all realize that commercial is now 40 years old?

Our Call: SKIP IT. Sausage Party: Foodtopia is unnecessarily dark for a cartoon about talking food, know what we mean?

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.