A Unique Meat Feast
Sausage
Party is an adult computer-animated comedy film directed by Greg Tiernan and
Conrad Vernon (Madagascar 3), writers including Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
(This is the End, The Interview). With the look and feel of a food-esque Toy
Story, Sausage Party follows the journey of supermarket foods come to life. All
food in supermarkets view humans as Gods, and they want nothing more than
shoppers to buy and take them home to what they believe is “The Great Beyond”.
Once the truth is revealed regarding what really happens to food that is taken home, a
sausage named Frank (Seth Rogen) goes on a journey of belief, love and survival to achieve his one goal: to get his
meaty form inside his girlfriend, Brenda the hot dog bun. While not the most
memorable or captivating adventure to come from Seth Rogen & crew, Sausage
Party has some great components based on the unique and saucy ingredients
blended into its recipe.
A partially-nutritious cast of characters, with a dash of stereotype.
Starting
with what’s fun about Sausage Party, it would be its unique setting alone as a
new playground for Rogen & Goldberg’s standard, laugh-filled adult-themed
writing. It’s hilarious to see what an R-Rated, over-the-top comedy does when
in the setting of inanimate food objects that have come to life. A banana’s face gets
peeled off; a potato is skinned alive and a jar of peanut butter holds his dead
wife: the jar of jam. There’s so many sausage-in-bun sex puns that you'll never make eye contact when eating hot dogs ever again. Sausage Party is full of adult humour, and any responsible parents will know not to let their children see it - it pushes its certification to the fullest by throwing uncensored raunchy and
violent metaphors in your face until you at least get a few howls of laughter
out.
Simply a quest to get that meat in.
Not only does the film have a gorgeous, Pixar-style look but it also has a full box of ammunition aimed at what almost seems like every group of people possible. Sausage Party really slows down during the second act for some necessary discovery and world development but it never stops with its social commentary on beliefs and racial food profiling. From lesbian latina taco shells to standard cultural feuds between western bagels and a middle-eastern lavash (a sexist flatbread with a goatee), Sausage Party is full of edible players that pass tongue-in-cheek banter back and forth at what seems like almost every other line with at least half being humorously effective.
Though it can get cheesy at times (Tehehe).
When saying only at least half of Sausage Party’s raunchy banter is effective, it’s sadly because you get to a point during its third act where the dynamic almost runs thin. Watching scenes like a bunch of tequilas in the alcohol aisle having a Mexican fiesta certainly does put a smile on your face, but by the time you get to the 122nd innuendo about inserting one thing into another, you almost want nothing more than for the story to progress forward. At least over half of Sausage Party’s “inn-your-endo’s” are effective, but a fair few of those will also lose their power punch after the first viewing. Nevertheless, as Sausage Party delves a bit deeper into its satirical metaphors, your grin grows even wider as belief systems asking “why are we here?” and “what’s our salvation?” are bashed, if not literally sliced open with a steak knife. It’s as if you can almost hear Christian parent associations grind their teeth whilst Seth Rogen echoes his signature chuckle into the distance.
Even if you
get tired of its innuendos and over-the-top humour three quarters
of the way through, the ending takes the heights of what Sausage Party was
riding on and soars it into the stratosphere. If anyone hasn’t been offended,
cringed or simply laughed off their posteriors, you can't help but at least smirk at what you're seeing (even if it is in a feeling of awkward surprise). It’s along the same lines as to
what you’ve already seen up until that point but it’s such in an unexpected way that it’s almost
hilariously ridiculous and will probably have you and your mates chuckling
whilst randomly bringing it up in a Rogen-Goldberg film discussion a year from now.
Verdict
Sausage
Party won’t be winning any Oscars but it excels in not trying to be any more
than what a film of its premise is meant be: a good laugh about a bunch of food going on an
adventure, with a filling in the form of discovering faith whilst fighting for
survival wrapped in a toasted layer of hard-hitting social and sexual-racial
satire. Its strength comes from not caring who could get offended, giving it
free reign to try and envelop you in as many cackle-worthy and risqué adult
jokes as possible. Depending on your own tastes, you may not love every minute of Sausage
Party but some of you with a low-brow sense of humour will also laugh
uncontrollably at least a few times. Whether you want to give Sausage Party a
repeat viewing or not will be about 50/50 odds, but you’ll certainly enjoy the
ride in the meantime.
Rating: 7/10
