Where does one begin to describe a movie like ‘Sausage Party’? Here’s a film so unbelievably crass, crude, and irreverent that it would be a disservice to any potential viewer to allude to any of the countless sequences Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have created here as it ultimately adds up to one of the year’s funniest outings. As offensive as it may seem though, much like similarly adult-aimed animated fare ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut’ and ‘Team America’, ‘Sausage Party’ is brilliantly intelligent in its observation on accepting one’s differences, peppering enough social commentary amongst its outrageous gags to never find itself accused of pushing an agenda.
As the likes of Pixar creations ‘Toy Story’ and ‘Inside Out’ gave way to the expressive respective journeys of toys and emotions, ‘Sausage Party’ hopes to emulate that path (in a far more adult way mind you) as it poses the question of what would life be like for the food we eat. In the plentiful-stocked abyss that is the Shopwell’s supermarket, the endless aisles of food on hand all dream of one thing – “the great beyond”. Believing that it is their life goal to be “chosen” by the gods to move on to greener pastures, each individual food wait patiently in their place for their time to come; as we all know this “great beyond” is merely the home of the common shopper, and when a recently returned jar of honey mustard (voiced by Danny McBride) sprouts off his warnings of the reality of this supposed paradise, his fellow food groups start questioning their purpose.
Once it becomes a hard-hitting reality that their lives will come to a horrifying end outside the Shopwell’s doors, cocky sausage Frank (Seth Rogen), his shapely bread-roll girlfriend Brenda (Kristen Wiig), Palestinian pita bread Lavash (David Krumholtz) and overtly-Jewish bagel Sammy (Edward Norton, channelling Woody Allen) band together in a bid to warn the other food groups of their fates, and yes the ethnicities of the pita bread and bagel makes for some amusing examinations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Bill Hader’s Native American-influenced whiskey bottle, a piece of chewing gum resembling Stephen Hawking, a lesbian-inclined taco voiced by Salma Hayek, and a literal douche round out the remaining tasteful characters defending their destiny.
There’s so much fun to be had with ‘Sausage Party’ that it remains best if I say as little as possible as the pleasures of this movie are found in its surprises. The fact that this movie comes courtesy of a directing duo experienced in children’s fare – Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon have such titles as ‘Thomas & Friends’ (yes, the tank engine) and ‘Shrek 2’ in their filmographies – means the look of the film is stellar with its popping visuals pleasant to the eye, even when a violent re-enactment of the opening minutes to ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and the most unexpected of sexual escapades are what we are laying witness to.
There’s already an audience built for this type of film, and its mentality is unlikely to persuade others opposed to the idea of profane-laced edibles, but for those open to accept the invite to ‘Sausage Party’ you will be well rewarded with a consistently hilarious film that knows exactly what it’s doing, and executing so in effortless fashion.
Directors: Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon
Cast: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Edward Norton, Salma Hayek, James Franco, Paul Rudd, Michael Cera
Classification: MA15+ (Strong Crude Sexual Humour, Coarse Language and Drug Use)
My rating: 4/5
Review by Peter Gray
