Sausage Party, which doesn’t come out until August and is still not completed, is as raunchy, over the top and bizarre as you would expect from Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and their cohorts, just in the animated form. Essentially a glossary of every stereotype known to Hollywood, this is definitely not a kid’s movie and it will be surprising if the MPAA doesn’t ask for some cuts in order to give it an R-rating.
Since the film - directed by animation veterans Conrad Vernon (Monsters vs. Aliens) and Greg Tiernan (Thomas The Tank Engine) was incomplete, it seems harsh to review it. While much of the basic animation was complete for the screening, many sequences lacked finished lighting. There was even a brief gag late in the movie that was still a storyboard. And a brief live-action scene at the end still had static images of the animated characters. That said, the bizarre story was all there and it was a weird one.
Sausage Party is essentially Toy Story for food, and Rogen and Goldberg make no attempt to hide their skewering of Pixar habits. Yes, this is the movie that shows what would happen if food had feelings and it’s really f**ked up, as Rogen noted, because we eat them.
However, the characters don’t know that they get eaten once humans buy them. At the beginning of every day, they sing an Alan Menken-penned song (yeah, the Alan Menken) about how they wish to be taken outside. Sausage Frank (Rogen) and hot dog bun Brenda (Kristen Wiig) hope that they will be bought on July 4th so they can finally be together.
When a jar of honey mustard is returned to the store with a horror story about how life really is, that sends Frank on a journey to find the truth. Weirdly, a giant douche (Nick Kroll) is out for revenge after Frank ruined his chance to go outside.
The journey includes a parody of the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, a look at love, repressed sexuality and the effects of bullying… all with food. It all climaxes (yeah…) with an extended food orgy sequence that nothing - absolutely nothing - can prepare you for.
Sausage Party will be a blast for those who enjoy gross-out comedy that exists for the sole purpose of grossing you out. There might be a heart in the story somewhere, but it isn’t immediately visible behind some tired jokes built on stereotypes… but they are funnier with food.
Sausage Party will be released by Sony on Aug. 12 and the film was co-produced by Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures after Rogen and Goldberg worked on it for eight years. Yes, it really took eight years to bring the story of food’s desires just to have sex to the big screen. Your trips to the grocery stores will never be the same again.