REVIEW: Sausage Party

"I'll not lie; this was pretty much my response when I watched the movie too"

There have been many, many animated films kicking about over the years – most have been the resultant hard work of the likes of Disney and Dreamworks who peddle fairy tales and happy endings. Some are a bit more off the mark like Titan A.E or that 1979 Lord of the Rings animation feature that was never quite finished. Some are based on literature and could be potentially disturbing like Watership Down. Nowadays, computers are used to make animations, and they tend to all be the same old, same old stories so when a movie about food comes along it might be worth a look-see. The trailers looked silly, but funny, and as the trailer wheeled on we discover that it’s definitely not for kids and that it’s the same team behind equally “silly” The Interview and This Is The End. Seth Rogan, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill and a slew of other stars voice various foodstuffs in Sausage Party. The story goes that in the supermarket every item of food stuff want to leave to go to paradise in the great beyond. They are chosen when they are picked up by customers who  buy them to take home. In a funny way (as in strange not ha-ha) it’s a twisted look at what we do with food – and the people are the evil ones and the food is just innocent and naive. Main man, or sausage, Frank (Seth Rogan) is desperate to (literally) get into Brenda Bunson (Kristen Wiig) a shapely bread roll with big lips and even bigger eyes. When they both have the chance to get taken to the great beyond, Frank breaks out of his packet to save another piece of food and leaves his sausage squad behind. As his crew leave for the great beyond, he is left stranded in the middle of the supermarket looking to get back to the packet of sausages so he, too, can go to the great beyond. As he laments the loss of his friends, he joins forces with Brenda, a taco and others to head back to the shelf. Meanwhile, the other sausages find out that the great beyond is not all that it is cracked up to be. Taking the term food porn in the literal sense, Sausage Party contains overtly (and excessive) sexual references, swearing (much of it needlessly) and debauchery and… a musical number. Written by Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid), “The Great Beyond” is the starting song for the movie and almost slips us into musical territory. Once over though, the musical drops and the movie becomes a hybrid of fantasy horror, animated adventure, insinuated light pornography and generally offensive material. As I watched this movie unfold there were numerous times I looked away and thought, “I can’t watch anymore” and went to stop the movie from continuing. But, I forced myself to watch it to the end and I was more and more gob smacked by what they had gotten away with in this movie. When it had finished, I sat down to try and comprehend what I just watched but only could conclude that this movie was written by the likes of those teenage boys who find doing silly sexy things with hot dogs is funny, snickering over words like fart and think they are cool by swearing every other word. If you imagine an 18 rated (or R rated if you are in the US) movie that involved food going on an adventure that includes scalping, slicing and killing many characters by evil means then this is the movie for you. It’s one part clever and fourteen parts stupid and the rest of it is plainly offensive. It’s a one watch movie (if you could stand to sit through it) and I don’t think I could watch it again. Juvenile and poorly written, this movie isn’t really that good and definitely not for children. It did have an impression on me though – a) I actually felt bad after watching it (both guilty for eating similar food stuffs and “dirty” for watching them “perform”) and b) found it totally offensive to just about everyone. Sausage Party is (not for children and) out now on digital, DVD and Blu-Ray.

POPSCORE: 5/10