PASTACOLYPSE (2023)

PASTACOLYPSE (2023)

Tagline: Nope.

(Animation, Comedy, Snow Man Chef) [R]

Note: This was given a TV-MA rating which is basically a [R] conversion if the MPAA had given this a rating. 

You want to know a secret, that country guy; he’s literally got 9 minutes and 23 frames to live. And if you want to stay alive around here, you’ve got to pretend you’re potatoes. 

In this one billionaire chef Alfredo Manicotti, loses a cooking contest to a Snow Man Chef due to his use of gluten in a world where gluten is illegal. Down and out, he visits a shop that has a magic noodle that ends up deforming him and his partner into grotesque noodle creatures who command a pasta army whose mission is to re-gluttonize the world. Yeah, you read all that correctly.

First off, my son is on a gluten-free diet. He has been all of his life and he actually gets sick from it. However, both he and I have been gifted with a sense of humor. This is an animated show and if you can’t have fun with things you might think are poking fun at you, you are going to have a pretty rough life. As much as the world tries to protect you from everything, you should run out into it from time to time to purposely get offended. You will grow a thicker skin that way and trust me, you will thank me later. 

I will say that this thing is not going to be for everyone. It’s a pretty cartoon gory onslaught of pasta death and mayhem. This means it basically lives up to its title. Some people will probably liken some of the humor in this to Rick & Morty, but I think it’s more along the lines of a long episode of AXE COP only with profanity. 

A few things I loved about this, is that we actually get an 80’s style training montage complete with a song that sounds like it’s from the era. The design work is pretty good even given the simplicity of the art style. A lot of the writing is wildly hysterical, but you do have to have a sense of humor for this kind of stuff to enjoy it. I also liked that it moves right along. We do get one of those annoying “let’s start from 15 minutes into the movie, then go back and recap, when we could have just told the story straight up” beginnings, but it doesn’t ruin the movie. It gets to the point pretty much right away. There isn’t much of a score for most of this film, but when there is it’s pretty solid. There is a fantastic part in here where Chub gets attacked by a pasta creature that bites him in the side of the head and says “Ahh, right in the genius!” Just the way that line is delivered had me laughing out loud. 

Things I didn’t like about the movie, is that I am not a huge gore fan, so I feel like that’s kind of a miss here throwing so much over-the-top crap in this. It’s cartoony and it’s not the end of the world, but for this story, it wasn’t necessary. There are also several pretty dumb run-on jokes that I pretty much thought were more agonizing than funny. 

The voice cast is pretty great. Lauren Holt is solid as Emma Manicotti. She is mostly known for her work on the mostly unfunny Saturday Night Live. Dana Snyder does a great job as Alfredo Manicotti in this. He is probably best known for his work on Sponge Bob Square Pants as GrandPat Star. Lavell Crawford does a great job as Chub. I liked Mary Spender as Mary. The director was involved in the show “The Awesomes” which I actually liked quite a bit. The writer was also responsible for Aqua Teen Hunger Force which I always thought was pretty stupid. So it was basically a mixed bag on that front.

I thought this was pretty fun and a lot of the jokes land, but there are some pretty bad jokes in this that don’t as well. Because of that, this one lands kind of in the middle in the humor department. 

Overall this gets a 4 out of 7 from me. I actually enjoyed it and I love that they came up with a story this out of the box and that someone was actually willing to do a movie around it. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF BENTO BOX ATLANTA AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.