Review: Adult cartoons 'Sausage Party' and 'Exploding Kittens,' one charming, one (purposely) not
"Adult cartoons," which have come to take up not inconsiderable space in the fields of what we call television, began in a state of relative innocence. "The Flintstones," a Stone Age version of "The Honeymooners," aired in prime time and dealt with work and marriage, but kids flocked to it; "Popeye the Sailor," though its male characters were forever beating one another up over a woman, was still child-friendly. But as with so many other things in our ever-changing, edge-cutting, envelope-pushing, tolerance-increasing culture, "adult" has come to mean not maturity, but sex, violence and, yes, bad words.
Two new cartoons not designed for children arrive this week.
Set in a supermarket among anthropomorphic groceries, the 2016 film "Sausage Party," from the Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg-Jonah Hill brain trust, was a sort a vulgar, profane play on "Toy Story" and its like, chock-full of sex and violence and bad words, played for laughs. What sentiment it purveyed was only a parody of sentiment.
When it's revealed that the world beyond the checkout counter is not the heavenly fulfillment their mythology has led them to expect but leads only to being eaten, the comestibles revolt, killing their human overlords and finishing off with an orgy — "pansexual," if the word might be applied to a variety of variously gendered fruits and vegetables and canned, packaged and processed goods. The film ends with the further revelation that they are only cartoons.
The sequel series "Sausage Party: Foodtopia," premiering Thursday on Amazon Prime Video, backs out of that metafictional, metaphysical corner in favor of a postapocalyptic scenario in which food has wiped out humankind — or most of it — and must build a new society. Returning from the film are heroes Frank (Rogen), as in "furter"; Barry (Michael Cera), a deformed hot dog; and Frank's girlfriend, Brenda (Kristen Wiig), a hot dog bun; along with Sammy, a bagel (Edward Norton, doing Woody Allen). The action moves out of the market and into the shopping center that contains it.
Being, in a sense, only human, the food will give way to greed, ego, jealousy, division and mob violence, though Frank and Brenda, the Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur in the story, will try to steer them otherwise. It's "Animal Farm" — an orange named Julius (Sam Richardson) plays the role of the pig Napoleon — with nods to "Apocalypse Now" and "Lord of the Flies."
The humor is long on visual and verbal puns. There are pop musical parodies (e.g., Megan Thee Scallion); a "Wiener" Herzog figure documenting Brenda's journey; a police force whose members include Chris Baloney, Kishka Hargitay and Iced Tea — it's amusing without being any more mordant than one of those 1930s cartoons that parodied Hollywood stars.
The series wobbles along the fine line between stupid and clever, falling — not by accident — to one side and then the other. You can't call it tossed off — there is a lot of work that goes into making a cartoon — though much of the writing has the air of having been born in a smoky room in a fit of giggling. On the one hand, this is one of the rare works, animated or otherwise, that discusses socialism as a better way — or at all. On the other, its central plot device is controlling a creature through its anus.
I do have one question. Why does the food have teeth?
A giant butt is also a feature of a portal between hell and Earth in another new cartoon series, "Exploding Kittens," premiering Friday on Netflix. Created by comic artist Matthew Inman and Shane Kosakowski ("You're the Worst"), it takes its name and feline theme from the popular card game, designed by Inman and Elan Lee. A new version of that game, "Exploding Kittens: Good vs Evil" is based in turn on the series, in which no kittens actually explode — though other things do.
The lesson here, one we've learned many times before, is that anything can amount to exploitable intellectual property. But "Exploding Kittens" really is sort of charming, in a way that "Sausage Party" is not (nor wants to be). It's no surprise — and quite encouraging — to find that Greg Daniels, of "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation," and Mike Judge, creator with Daniels of "King of the Hill," all shows that marvelously mix the sweet and the sour, are among the executive producers.
Like "Paradise Lost" and "The Good Place," this is a story of heaven, hell and Earth. The model is corporate. God (Tom Ellis, Lucifer in "Lucifer," switching sides), having got drunk, left a pizza in the oven and burned down "the entire west end of heaven," is sent by his "board" to rehabilitate himself on Earth by living among humans, as a cat. (He retains minimal godlike powers.) Likewise, Beelzebub (Sasheer Zamata), the daughter of the late, latest Satan, is sent up by her board to Earth to work on her "evil game" — also as a cat.
The real reason for this, I assume, is to fold in the "kittens" theme. But it's a fact that cats are funny.
Both wind up in the orbit of the Higgins family. Mother Abbie (Suzy Nakamura) is a Navy SEAL turned animal control worker who craves action and whose accidental "prayer" has brought God down to heal her family, an assignment he regards with undisguised disgust. (Ellis is very good at disgust.) Father Marv (Mark Proksch) is a cheery schlub who works at a big box store and spends his free time playing tabletop games, another callback to the source material; daughter Greta (Ally Maki) is a science prodigy; and son Travis (Kenny Yates) is desperate for internet fame. They are good people, but they have grown apart.
Cultural references abound, nearly always to the detriment of the thing mentioned, including open-mic nights, Ted Cruz, "Ellen," "the tiny fecal particles in the food at Chick-fil-A," "living in Arizona," SeaWorld and folding fitted sheets as a potential instrument of torture in the underworld.
There is violence here, given the demonic component, and not a little retching, given the cats, but nothing near what "Sausage Party" delivers. (And there's no sex.) Family and friendship are the themes, threaded through the mayhem, and because the central characters are underdogs — even the gods trapped in their furry feline bodies — we root for them, as disgust turns to affection, competition to cooperation, and lost love is found again. It's corny as … hell, but it's genuine corn. You might let your kids watch, depending, of course, on your kids.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
