Pasta! Pasta has taken over the Earth. It’s dark ziti. It’s gnocchi libre. It’s the secret of the orzo. All at once. Careful. They like their humans “Al dente” as in “full of dents.”
There’s silly and then there’s silly. Didn’t we just have a movie about food attacking humans? No, I suppose I was thinking about Little Shop of Horrors. Now? The gluten is a glutton for sadism. That’s where this all begins. It is the year 2049 and gluten is verboten. Internationally recognized award-winning chef Alfredo Manicotti (voice of Dana Snyder) is in danger of losing his fortune unless he can win a big cooking competition. Fearing the worst, he hits the black market for gluten, the key additive to his entry. (In this reality, gluten has been banned worldwide, donchaknow?)
Well, you know how these things go … pretty soon, he’s a pasta monster. And not just a pasta monster, he is THE pasta monster, suddenly leading an army of aggressive sentient homicidal pasta variations from fettuccine to ferrazzouli, from tortellini to trofie, from bucatini to bowtie … and everything in between.
This movie is cute, but -like well-cooked pasta- not terribly sharp, so it’s hard to guess whether the producers actually feel gluten has got a bad rap or not. I suppose it doesn’t matter, but I wa
s kind of hoping the film would make a definitive statement on the order of: “life has unfairly maligned gluten.” While the main character makes that statement, Pastacopalyse did not.
Naturally, the surviving sentient non-pasta beings are forced to go to war for control of the planet; this includes Manicotti’s daughter, Emma (Lauren Holt), and a series of D-list talents. Tubi isn’t quite Netflix, yet, knowwhatI’msayin’?
Pastacolypse was a mildly-enjoyable novelty. It’s a film you’ll smile more about for premise than execution. It’s thankfully short at 70 minutes, yet leaves the audience in a fairly unresolved state; it’s as if the production crew ran out of money and simply said, “end it where you can.” Ummm, ok. So it did. The animation is weak and you’ll get bigger laughs out of an average viewing of “Family Guy,” but the premise is the thing. Pastacolypse definitely has an absurd premise.
Murdered right and left by sentient vermicelli
Humans are done in by the contents at the deli
It’s a loaded pasta intrusion
And no escaping this conclusion
The world has entirely devolved into Hell-i
Rated TV-MA, 70 Minutes
Director: Jason Shwartz
Writer: Matt Maiellaro
Genre: Silly
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The tongue-in-cheek crowd
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: If you don’t like animation or horror, you’re not gonna go far with this one
