#this video only exists in potato quality BUT listen i had to gif it

[jimintomystery]

Foodfight! (ugh)

I voted for Dex Dogtective in a poll the other day and it reminded me that I never actually watched that shitty Foodfight! movie from 2012. So I did. This was not a good idea.

There isn't a whole lot to say about Foodfight! that hasn't already been said. The project was in development hell for so long that it defaulted on its debt, and investors took over to at least get something out the door. The most obvious issue is the bad animation, though that speaks for itself.

But here's the thing: This movie could've had Pixar-quality animation and it'd still be hot garbage. "What if mascots for popular products lived in your local store?" is a middling idea at best, and the story mishandles it every step of the way.

It would be easy to say this movie needed a lot of popular corporate mascots to really work, and the best they could do was Charlie the Tuna and the Vlasic stork. But I remember thinking the first Toy Story wouldn't work without heavy hitters like Barbie and Lego, and yet they got along fine with just Mr. Potato Head and Etch-a-Sketch. Similarly, Wreck-It Ralph succeeded with a cast of skillful pastiches of familiar video game characters, and mere cameos by the big names. In theory Foodfight! could make up a cereal mascot that reminds you of Tony the Tiger while leaving room for changes to fit the plot. But in execution we get...Dex Dogtective.

Dex is the mascot for Cinnamon Sleuth cereal, and also a detective, and also a dog, and also he dresses like Indiana Jones, and also he likes raisins, and also he runs a nightclub like Rick Blaine in Casablanca. So he has like six different gimmicks, and the cereal mascot part is easily the least important. The only reason you'd even suspect Dex is a character from a box of cereal is because he's in a movie about brand mascots. Indeed, none of the characters created for this movie look like they were designed to sell anything, least of all groceries.

The strongest concept in the movie (which isn't saying much) is that the brands are facing an invasion by the evil Brand X. This makes sense, seeing as Brand X is by definition generic, with no iconic mascot except the pejorative and mysterious implications of that term. Listen, I know this sounds dumb, but you could do something with this. In a world of where brands come to life in the form of their mascots, who or what emerges from a brand without a mascot? How would such a being differ from the likes of, say, Count Chocula? Such a character might reject some fundamental principle that the good guys hold dear.

At this juncture, a sharper "secret lives of things that aren't alive" movie could make some insightful point that ties the story together. Something about how the world needs brand mascots, I suppose. But nobody actually needs brand mascots, for pete's sake, except for the people who came up with this movie. So there's no core idea for Brand X to oppose--the good guys' world exists just to exist, so the bad guys exist just to destroy it. With that baseline laziness established, Brand X paradoxically has lots of mascots, all of whom look like Nazis for some reason.

Well, okay, technically Brand X's leader, Lady X, looks less like a Nazi and more like the Baroness from Cobra. But it figures that she doesn't quite fit in with the rest, since she created Brand X! Yeah, so at the end it's revealed she was a mascot for a poorly-marketed brand of prunes, and when she was discontinued she went to Brazil (???) for plastic surgery (???) to make her all hot. Then she somehow amassed the resources in the real world to create Brand X, complete with a human-sized android (!!!) so she could pass herself off as a real person and sell her wares to stores.

Dex is astonished by this backstory, since the mascots are like three inches tall and can't even leave the store. Lady X explains the plot hole by saying "Humans! When you look like this you can get them to do anything. Size only counts for men."

"Size only counts for men."

"Size only counts for men."

(She's talking about fucking.)

(fucking)

(-ucking -ucking -king)

Anyway, I need a nap now. Please don't watch this movie.

#foodfight! #foodfight #dex dogtective #i keep trying to call him 'dexter dogtective' for some reason #as if his name needs to be clunkier somehow