{"id":6321,"date":"2024-10-19T23:21:46","date_gmt":"2024-10-20T03:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6321"},"modified":"2024-10-19T23:21:46","modified_gmt":"2024-10-20T03:21:46","slug":"sausage-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/19\/sausage-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Sausage Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Sausage Party<\/strong> (2016)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong crude sexual content, pervasive language, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Christopher Lennertz and Alan Menken\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 12, 2016 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $97.7M (US)\/$141.3M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

FOREWORD: It should be noted that Sausage Party<\/strong> is NOT for children. The computer-animated comedy is rated R. It\u2019s 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\u2019t. I\u2019m now wondering how many uncomfortable questions she had to answer on the ride home.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Comedy, like many things, is subjective. What makes one person\u2019s sides hurt from laughing makes another person\u2019s head hurt from not laughing. It\u2019s 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<\/strong>, 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 \u201cThe Great Beyond\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Rogen 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 \u201cShopwell\u2019s\u201d to be \u201cchosen\u201d (purchased) by \u201cthe gods\u201d (customers) to be taken to \u201cThe Great Beyond\u201d (whatever it is that lies beyond the automatic doors). One day, Frank and Brenda are chosen and couldn\u2019t be happier because it means they will finally get to be together. Sausage, bun\u2026.. this movie may be lots of things but subtle isn\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Their 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\u2019s kitchen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s at this point Sausage Party<\/strong> becomes about the items\u2019 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<\/strong> 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\u2019d expect from anybody being told that their beliefs are BS. There\u2019s also a message about racism with the Nazi sauerkraut talking about eliminating \u201cthe Juice\u201d. Like I said, NOT subtle.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sausage Party<\/strong> is neither as funny nor clever as it seems to think it is. It has a few scattered scenes and the movie\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019t anything special. It\u2019s 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\u2019s bff James Franco as a stoner.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Speaking of which, I think you probably have to be stoned to fully appreciate Sausage Party<\/strong>. It\u2019s the kind of movie I would have liked better in the mid-90s when I was a college stoner. Maybe I\u2019ll smoke a joint and watch it again in the future. Maybe it\u2019ll be funnier. I just wonder how Sausage Party<\/strong> will affect the accompanying case of the munchies. Do Fritos feel pain? I\u2019ll get back to you on that.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sausage Party (2016)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong crude sexual content, pervasive language, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Christopher Lennertz and Alan Menken\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 12, 2016 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Michael […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animation","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Sausage-Party-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6321"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6496,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6321\/revisions\/6496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}