Sausage Party (2016) Columbia/Comedy RT: 89 minutes Rated R (strong crude sexual content, pervasive language, drug use) Director: Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon Screenplay: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir Music: Christopher Lennertz and Alan Menken Release date: August 12, 2016 (US) Cast: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton, Salma Hayek, Anders Holm, Greg Tiernan, Sugar Lynn Beard. Box Office: $97.7M (US)/$141.3M (World)
Rating: **
FOREWORD: It should be noted that Sausage Party is NOT for children. The computer-animated comedy is rated R. It’s extremely crude and vulgar. Would you expect anything less from a comedy featuring Seth Rogen and his pals? A parent would have to be out of his/her mind to bring their kids to a movie like this. I sat in the same row with such a parent. Her two boys looked to be about 10 and 12. I kept checking to see if she came to her senses and pulled her kids out of the theater. She didn’t. I’m now wondering how many uncomfortable questions she had to answer on the ride home.
Comedy, like many things, is subjective. What makes one person’s sides hurt from laughing makes another person’s head hurt from not laughing. It’s always been that way. My dad thought Some Like It Hot (the 1959 cross-dressing comedy starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe) was hilarious; my mom thought it was horrendous. The comedy of Sausage Party, directed by Greg Tiernan (Thomas & Friends) and Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2), never really connected for me. It has a few amusing moments, but the novelty of foul-mouthed talking food wears off pretty fast. It starts off strong with a Disney-esque musical number “The Great Beyond” written by Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin) and an interesting premise, but it soon devolves into a standard comedy aimed at frat boys of all ages.
Rogen voices Frank, a sausage who lives in a package with ten other sausages including Barry (Cera, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), a deformed link who endures the teasing and taunting of the others. Frank has a thing for Brenda (Wiig, Ghostbusters), a hot dog bun who lives in a package right next to him. It is the dream of every food item in “Shopwell’s” to be “chosen” (purchased) by “the gods” (customers) to be taken to “The Great Beyond” (whatever it is that lies beyond the automatic doors). One day, Frank and Brenda are chosen and couldn’t be happier because it means they will finally get to be together. Sausage, bun….. this movie may be lots of things but subtle isn’t one of them.
Their happiness is short-lived when a jar of honey mustard (McBride, Vice Principals) warns them of the horrors that await them in the Great Beyond before jumping out of the cart to his death. He tells them to talk to a bottle of whiskey, Firewater (Hader, Trainwreck), who will confirm his story. So it is that Frank and Brenda stay behind while their friends head towards certain doom in the customer’s kitchen.
It’s at this point Sausage Party becomes about the items’ journey through the store back to their respective aisles. Frank and Brenda and joined by a bagel named Sammy Bagel Jr. (Norton, The Grand Budapest Hotel) and a flatbread named Kareem Abdul Lavash (Krumholtz, the Harold & Kumar movies). No subtlety in the motive department either. Sausage Party wants to make a statement about religious conflicts and belief systems so obviously Sammy and Kareem represent the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. As for Frank trying to tell others the truth about the Great Beyond, their reaction is pretty much what you’d expect from anybody being told that their beliefs are BS. There’s also a message about racism with the Nazi sauerkraut talking about eliminating “the Juice”. Like I said, NOT subtle.
Sausage Party is neither as funny nor clever as it seems to think it is. It has a few scattered scenes and the movie’s final moments did make me chuckle. The overall effect, however, is not good. I admire its attempts at satire and it does succeed to a certain degree in that area. It’s just not as a strong a satire as South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut or Team America: World Police. I think Ralph Bakshi (Fritz the Cat) would have done a better job of it. The animation isn’t anything special. It’s okay but unexceptional. The voice talents try their best and do okay. The makers lined up some pretty solid talent including hot tamale Salma Hayek (Grown Ups) as a lesbian taco and Rogen’s bff James Franco as a stoner.
Speaking of which, I think you probably have to be stoned to fully appreciate Sausage Party. It’s the kind of movie I would have liked better in the mid-90s when I was a college stoner. Maybe I’ll smoke a joint and watch it again in the future. Maybe it’ll be funnier. I just wonder how Sausage Party will affect the accompanying case of the munchies. Do Fritos feel pain? I’ll get back to you on that.
