"Sausage Party" Review

Title: Sausage Party

Directed by: Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan

Written by: Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg

Year: 2016


The initial trailer for Sausage Party made a big splash when it came out. Seeming like a child-friendly film at first before pulling the rug out from under us with brutal death sequences was brilliant marketing. The idea of a raunchy R-rated animated movie felt innovative, and it had a hilarious premise as well. Is this a fresh and unique comedy, or a rotten serving that should be tossed away?

In a grocery store, the food and items sold there believe that humans are gods, and that being chosen is the equivalent of going to the Promised Land. However, they will soon learn the truth about their fates. Now, they must fight against the humans in order to survive.

Overall, the voice cast for Sausage Party is solid. Seth Rogen stars as Frank the hot dog and he brings his signature personality to the role. If you are a fan of Rogen, then you should like Frank. If not, then Rogen does nothing to win you over. Kristen Wiig is good as Brenda the bun, but she is not given many opportunities to flex her comedic muscles. The best performance comes from Michael Cera, working within his element by portraying Barry, the deformed hot dog. Barry is a consistently enjoyable character and he is even granted some surprising emotional value.

Bill Hader is unrecognizable as Firewater, pulling off some of the funniest lines with a booming voice. Salma Hayek is rather entertaining as Teresa Taco, and Edward Norton is strangely, yet fittingly, cast as the Jewish Sammy Bagel. Nick Kroll is unfortunately irritating as Douche. The idea behind the character is hilarious, but the lines given to him coupled with Kroll's voicework makes for an annoying villain.

The story, however, is where Sausage Party really loses its footing. The film starts out well as we are given a tour of the daily routine grocery store items go through. There are plenty of great concepts and ideas thrown around during the opening. The food sings a song every morning to appease the gods; the garbage bin is shown as a black void; ideas like these are plentiful near the beginning and work well. But once the adventure gets started, the story becomes very underwhelming. The main storyline concerns Frank and Brenda trying to figure out the truth about the humans, and it is very bland. These two remain in the grocery store, which, although there are some interesting locations, does not deliver on the premise promised in the trailer.

The main subplot follows Barry who goes home with one of the humans. This plot-line is significantly better than the main one because we get to see the food react to what we do to them. The varied methods of violence portrayed are splendidly horrific and hilarious. Sausage Party needed more of these scenes to capitalize on its premise. Barry's entire story is great, but it is terribly sidelined to make room for the main plot.

The film began to pick up again when it reached its final act. There is an epic final showdown at the grocery store that is very creative and will make you think twice about entering a food store. The picture seemed to be on an upward trend. It almost won me over, had it not been for once scene. Typically, animated children's films end with a song-and-dance number. Sausage Party decides to spice things up a bit with an extended sequence of something a little more inappropriate. As a contrast to what other kid's movies do, this is a brilliant concept. However, it goes on for far too long and the joke becomes stale very quickly.

So how does Sausage Party function on a comedic level? Honestly, I expected more from it. Do not get me wrong, there are definitely a number of laughs in this movie. One spark of controversy will probably be all the racial jokes. For me, I found those getting the biggest laughs. No one is safe from the offensive jokes made, as they attack everybody. But I feel that it is done in such a way that none of them are truly offensive. Also, the violent attacks committed on the grocery store products is comedic gold. I wish more of this was implemented because these jokes were the highlight of the movie.

Where the comedy really falls short is in its repetition. The filmmakers confuse swearing and cursing for humor. Sure, seeing a hot dog drop f-bombs like there is no tomorrow is funny the first couple of times. But it is not enough to carry a feature length movie. As a matter of fact, it can get quite grating after a while. If this technique were used more sparingly, I think it would have registered much better with the viewer. And aside from the violence, racial jokes, and swearing, there is not much else to make you laugh. A good pun here and there, but I found myself sitting quite stone-faced the entire second act.

The animation is good, but nothing to write home about. There is a wide array of colors that allow the food to pop and come to life. However, while the food looks good for the most part, the humans look awkward as hell. They all have misshapen faces and strange features that make them look more like mutations. I am almost certain this was done purposely, perhaps for comedic effect, but it just ends up looking odd and out of place.

Sausage Party is a mixed bag of a picture. The talent involved and premise seem to be perfectly paired to create the funniest movie of the year. Instead, we have a film that is entertaining, but fails to impress. The main story is awfully dull, the frequent cursing becomes platitudinous quickly, and the ending sequence is too drawn out. Even though the side stories are very good, there are a great number of jokes that land, and the film has a wonderful final scene, this is not enough to make up for the mediocrity that plagues this feature. This is a severe letdown, despite how innovative the film aimed to be.

Grade: C+