Sausage Party Foodtopia: It’s Lord of the Flies but with talking groceries

If you saw Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s bizarre 2016 animated film, Sausage Party, you have some idea of what you’re in for.

The movie about anthropomorphic groceries in a big supermarket discovering the great beyond was not fluffy clouds but ugly death was hilarious, smart and, at times, super offensive.

If jokes about sauerkraut kicking kosher foods from their original shelves only for bagels and co to encroach on the lavosh bread’s west aisle is going to make you go, “Well! I never!”, then Sausage Party wasn’t for you.

The movie even ended on an orgiastic bacchanal in which every character’s orifice was entered – a sight you cannot unsee.

Eight years on, Rogen and Goldberg are back with a sequel series on streaming, picking up after the liberation of the grocery characters from their hideous human enemies.

It’s the apocalypse and humans are basically extinct but for Frank the sausage (Rogen), Brenda the hotdog bun (Kristen Wiig), Barry the sausage (Michael Cera), Sammy Bagel Jr (Edward Norton) and their friends and compatriots, it’s utopia.

They no longer have to worry about that formidable opponent: teeth.

But there are things they didn’t bargain for as they set about in “paradise” – first it was wet missiles falling from the sky, aka rain, decimating the softer and more perishable foodstuffs like doughnuts. Then it was the monsters from above, aka birds, swooping them to their doom.

They discover one human still alive, Jack (Will Forte), to keep prisoner for his knowledge.

While the first episode repeats the sexcapades of the film (that’s what the rain disrupts), this sequel series is less offensive than the movie. The edges have been filed down and it seems less gung-ho about being provocative.

But what is interesting about Sausage Party: Utopia is how it explores the pitfalls and perils of setting up a new society.

The characters have an opportunity to organise themselves however they want. Without the limitations of fear (gah, humans!) or the lies of their previous faith-based ignorance (the great beyond!), they can create the world they want to live in.

You know what happens instead of a utopia as envisaged by Thomas More? What happens to every society in which humans or non-humans are corrupted by greed, selfishness and entitlement?

It’s Lord of the Flies but with sausages.

There’s resource hoarding (precious ice and refrigerator space), exclusion and exploitation of the disadvantaged (perishables) and the enrichment of the elite.

The eggs are taken advantage of as non-unionised workers, punching in and out and fired when there’s even the whiff of industrial rights.

The villain of the piece is Julius (Sam Richardson), a navel orange with a familiar quiff, who has amassed great wealth and holds his power over the vulnerable, selling them lies that his riches are really there to serve them, as long as he doesn’t have to share it.

Trickle-down economics! It works! Really!

It’s a fascinating way to boil down the cruelties of late-stage capitalism and the charlatans that persuade the disadvantaged to vote against their own interests. That Julius is that particular shade of colour is no coincidence, especially when the story introduces - dun dun dun – an election.

The citizens of Foodtopia face the choice of who they want to lead them. It’s obviously not an honest contest and the series co-opts various elements of real-world electoral battles that show the democratic process does not give equal access.

That’s more interesting than any orgy.

Sausage Party: Foodtopia is streaming on Prime Video