Sausage Party
Ladies and Gentlemen, pack your bongs…
Seth Rogen has gathered his usual gang of ripped-to-the-tits idiots (James Franco, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Paul Rudd, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson et al), augmented it with some sketch comedy thoroughbreds (Kristen Wiig, Nick Kroll, Bill Hader), thrown in a dash of Hollywood royalty (Edward Norton, Salma Hayek) and come up with Sausage Party, the filthiest R-rated (well, MA15+ here in the hard as fuck Antipodes) animated comedy about anthropomorphised grocery items ever exposed to celluloid.
(Unless there’s a little known Ralph Bakshi curio of which I potentially need to be made aware?)
Alright, enough with the parentheses.
Briefly.
Here’s the premise: every flatly-lit supermarket you’ve ever listlessly stumbled through is actually a thriving world and ecosystem unto itself, populated, in true Toy Story fashion, by sentient foodstuffs, produce, condiments and liquor, all of whom lead rich emotional lives, unbeknownst to the gormless humans that frequent and staff, in this case, the Shopwell’s in which the majority of Sausage Party’s action takes place.
So: Frank, a frankfurt (Rogen, and yes of course we go to town with the dick jokes) longs to be with hot dog bun soulmate Brenda (Kristen Wiig)- they spend their days on the shelf, daring to ‘touch tips’ and dreaming of ‘Red, White and Blue Day’, on which they’re convinced they’ll be Chosen, finally escape their plastic prophylactic prisons and consummate their love affair in The Great Beyond.
See, our grocery item protagonists (horny and foul mouthed to a leek) have developed a belief system (complete with rousing Harry Warren/ Busby Berkeley inspired devotional number) in which the human race are actually Gods. The ultimate existential goal is to be purchased and taken into the The Great Beyond, a promised land beyond Shopwell’s radiantly lit sliding doors.
Of course, things inevitably go tits-up. A hysterical jar of honey mustard makes it back from the Other Side with dread tidings — The Great Beyond is actually a hellish charnel kitchen, a perpetual Inferno in which the Gods torture, flay, disembowel, boil, mutilate, incinerate and eventually consume the hapless denizens of Shopwell’s.
Cue scenes of Saving Private Ryan inspired pathos and carnage as Frank and Brenda escape into the bowels of the supermarket, forming a posse of fellow edibles (bagel, flatbread, taco) as they embark on their quest to unravel the mysteries of The Great Beyond.
Meanwhile, the unhinged, ‘roided out Douche (Nick Kroll) is hot on our heroes’ consumable heels, enraged by Frank (accidentally) thwarting the feminine hygiene product’s manifest destiny — an intimate date with the soccer mum who’s purchased Frank’s mates and is presently escorting them to their fates. Increasingly volatile as he repeatedly juices up, Douche pursues his prey relentlessly as they trek through the realms of Shopwell’s.
To reveal much more would be doing some gleefully crude reveals and cameos a disservice, but, suffice to say, Frank’s fellow frank, the “mutilated” Barry encounters a waster on bath salts who can “see” the sentient grocery world, we bear horrified witness to a spectacularly inventive edibles orgy, and sure, why not throw a little bit of stoner Quantum Physics into the mix for good measure?
Being equal opportunity provocateurs, writers Rogen, Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir and Evan Goldberg, along with directors Craig Vernon (a couple of Madagascars and a Shrek, but don’t hold that against him) and Greg Tiernan serve up a world in which every ethnic and religious stereotype is gleefully embraced and mercilessly, impartially skewered.
Norton’s Sammy Bagel Jr and David Krumholtz’s Vash (flatbread), for example, discover “hummus” is their biggest barrier to acceptance and also their common bond.
‘Subtle’ Sausage Party ain’t.
What we have here, then, is a rambunctious animated road movie that lampoons religious dogma while also making a passionate case for tolerance and accepting others’ beliefs.
Yep. Sausage Party is puerile, it’s crass, it’s crude, and, perhaps most shockingly of all, it’s a thoughtful, humanist (you know what I mean) fable told with randy, sweary animated grocery items.
Coming from a movie in which a frankfurt triple penetrates a bagel, hot dog bun and a sheet of flatbread (with an Omar Sharif goatee), this is 2016’s dirtiest, guiltiest pleasure at the flicks, whilst also being stealthily thoughtful and subversive satire of humanity’s foibles.
See it, and pray some dopey parentals bring the under-tens in for your bonus theatrical amusement.
Now, in the spirit of ‘party’, why not settle back and crank up ten hours of Kevin MacLeod’s notorious classic ‘Who Likes To Party?’ (as featured on Harmontown) for your repetitive listening pleasure?
Originally published at http://hopscotchfriday.tumblr.com/post/148779109048/sausage-party
