Sausage Party: Review

Director: Conrad Vernon, Greg Tiernan

Cast: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Edward Norton, David Krumholtz, Nick Kroll, Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Salma Hayek, James Franco, Paul Rudd, Bill Hader

Welcome to Shopwell’s; a conglomerate supermarket in which all products are sentient -unbeknownst to humans. The food items are devout to the ‘Gods’ whom give liberation by purchasing and trollying them off through the pearly gates that are the shop doors. Frank (Rogen) is the valiant sausage who starts to doubt the traditional beliefs, and along with girlfriend Brenda the Bun (Wiig), Sammy the Bagel (Norton) and Kareem the Lavash (Krumholtz), he is intent on unearthing the facts regarding the world outside their polythene packaging, all the while being stalked by a revenge-thirsty douche (Kroll).  

Proposing the headscratcher ‘What would it be like if our food had feelings?’, Sausage Party is a sendup of animation giants’ tendencies to ask the same of inanimate objects like toys or cars. But get this- it is R rated. Thus, the makers of This Is the End grant us with adult bonuses such as swearing, sexual overtones and drugs. Unfortunately it is the freedom of the certificate and the lack of limitations that causes this movie’s undoing.

Many of the jokes hinge on a food item spewing crude language. Are the audience expected to shriek with delight at this preposterous notion? We exclaim ‘a Sausage shouldn’t say a thing like that! My children eat sausages!’. Much of the comedy is reliant on innuendo; one excitable banger comments that a bun is ‘waiting to get filled with his meat’. This is the epitome of the humour standard in this movie. We’re all for scatological gags at Cynical Cinephiles – I’ve been known to enjoy a fart joke - although when puerility is used exclusively, it feels like a great deal of apathy on the filmmaker’s part. Someone told me after the film ‘I hear much of it was improvised’. Cue a complete lack of surprise from yours truly. Perhaps with a little more time, there could have been extra jokes with a touch of class. A running food/pun bit involving the villain being interrupted by food stuffs who think he is talking to them appeared to have a pinch more thought behind it and this was appreciated.  

     

The general concept of the film is decent, the parallels to our own world and our own existential ponderings is inspired. There just didn’t seem to be much or enough sense of direction. The premise comes across a little sketchy in parts, for example, the fact that it is not only food that has emotion. The antagonist is a douche, the natural enemy of the sausage. It felt strange - the bad guy surely should be another edible? Later on a gross-out moment included a shell-shocked prophylactic confessing his harrowing experience. So what, now any object bought from a store has sentience? More clarity is required.

The denouement is also completely unsatisfying. After a disturbing and long-winded food-orgy sequence, a welcomed yet abrupt ending transpires. Spoiler alert: the characters discover they are entirely fictional and are the creations of actors in another universe, compelling them to go through a portal to go there. This is where the film ends. The premise had potential and simplicity but becomes convoluted as the story bungles on. If Pixar had taken the subject of food having feeling, and stuck to it in an admittedly conventional family-friendly style (as is typical with animation), this could have been a well-executed idea. Sadly, however, what we do have is an undercooked movie that leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth.      

MS