Sausage Party Review

6.5 out of 10

Cast:

Seth Rogen as Frank

Kristen Wiig as Brenda

Michael Cera as Barry

Edward Norton as Sammy Bagel, Jr.

Salma Hayek as Teresa Taco

David Krumholtz as Vash

Nick Kroll as Douche

Bill Hader as Firewater

Craig Robinson as Mr. Grits

Conrad Vernon as Twinks

Directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon

Sausage Party Review:

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s (Superbad) long-in-the-making passion project, about animated food discovering to their horror what happens to them when they leave the grocery store, is exactly what you would expect from the creators of This Is The End and Superbad – raunchy but surprising and even inspired humor, but little else. Similar to their directorial debut, Rogen and Goldberg (working here with Rogen’s old animation collaborator Conrad Vernon from Monsters vs. Aliens and UK director Greg Tiernan) gleefully mix a high-concept plot with the lowest of low-brow comedy. The dichotomy is even more explicit in Sausage Party, as the filmmakers mix the bright colors and happy design of children’s fare – right down to a cheerful and upbeat songs by former Disney go-to composer Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid) – with aggressively adult ideas and dialogue and song lyrics you absolutely cannot quote in public.

The food at the supermarket is living a dream and in more ways than one. Delicious would-be snacks like Frank the sausage (Rogen) and Brenda the hot dog bun (Wiig) have convinced themselves the best day of their lives will be when the Gods (everyday shoppers) pick them from the shelf and take them to heaven where they will get the greatest rewards for all eternity. Which means, for Frank and Brenda, they’ll finally get out of the packages and be able to have sex.

The joke is very much on them, in every possible meaning of the phrase, in the one big and genuinely-inspired idea at the core of Sausage Party – what would food’s reaction be if it could think and realized what exactly we had in store for it. And when that is the core of the humor, Sausage Party is as funny as the filmmakers seem to want it to be.

It’s epitomized early on by an accident causing several items to fall from their shopping cart in a massacre of monster movie-like effectiveness: bananas come out of their peels, jars of peanut butter kneel over broken jars of jelly, etc. It is disturbing but also impossible not to laugh at. The simple truth of food preparation is transformed into a horror film, but the irony is so rich it can’t help but be funny even as the characters themselves have completely realistic freak outs. It’s a potential minefield of humor and the way Rogen and Goldberg tiptoe through it without blowing themselves up speaks to their skill.

Which makes the jokes that don’t work – and there are many – all the more infuriating. Because when they get away from the high concept, the filmmakers wallow in extremely hoary racial and ethnic stereotypes: Hitleresque sauerkraut, a Mexican stereotype taco, and a constantly bickering bagel and lavash who argue about trying to share the same aisle space. Unfortunately these elements take up a lot more of the film’s running time and make the shockingly-funny elements forgettable.

It is partly because Sausage Party is far more plot-driven film than many of their others which leads to less riffing and more story development, which is where Rogen and Goldberg tend to be at their weakest as writers. Give them a handful of characters in a room and they will have them quickly and cheerfully throwing crude but funny insults at one another along with the odd insight into the strangeness of their existence. Give them a plot to develop and they resort to tepid and well-worn racial stereotypes and sex gags or, in Sausage Party’s case, equally-clichéd jokes about the nature of organized religion.

As comedy it is over the top, often surprising (mainly in the depths to which it will plunge, primarily in the sex and violence categories) and occasionally even sharply observed. As satire it is very, very dull.

Of all the offspring of the Judd Apatow talent farm, Rogen has proven the funniest and frequently most inspired comedic storyteller but also the shallowest with limited interests for the kinds of jokes and stories he likes to tell, and Sausage Party is nearly the ur-example of that.

If you are a fan of Seth Rogen, you should have a pretty good idea what you are getting into. If you are not a fan of Seth Rogen, you should have a pretty good idea what you are not getting into. Either way, Sausage Party is quintessential Rogen, offering no more and no less than we have come to expect: raunchy but surprising and even inspired humor, and little else.