Sausage Party (2016) Review

Sausage Party is one of those rare animated films that is more aimed at adults, hence the R-rating. It's raunchy, it's offensive, it has no limit to what it can do. It has been sitting well with audiences, but to me, it left a lot to be desired.

In this film, it's set inside a supermarket, where grocery food items look forward to the day that they are taken home by humans, who are referred to as gods. Little do they know that when they are chosen to go home with them, they meet their inevitable end by getting eaten. A hot dog named Frank (voiced by Seth Rogen) goes to learn more about their fates and tries to warn everybody else. He also has a desire to put himself inside a bun named Brenda (voiced by Kristen Wiig). You can already see where that is going.

They are also joined by other colorful characters like this deformed hot dog (Michael Cera), a Middle Eastern lavash (David Krumholtz), a Jewish bagel (Edward Norton), and a lesbian Mexican taco (Salma Hayek) who lusts for Brenda.

I will have to say that I found the premise to be rather creative. It's basically showing what it is like being an anthropomorphic food, and by gosh, is it messed up. Not only that, I thought the designs of each of the food items were fine. I didn't quite dig how stereotypical some of them were, like, once again, the lavash who is obviously Middle Eastern and this Mexican bottle of wine. With that said, though, I did manage to sense the camaraderie between the main group, having some decent chemistry altogether.

In addition, I found the animation to be pretty good. It's fluid and wacky, and it's all done on a lower budget. While not the most polished, I especially liked how convincing each food item looked, like how the hot dogs shined against the light.

I wanted to enjoy this movie, but there is one thing that is holding me back from doing so: the comedy. I get what they were going for: it satirizes many animated films by Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks (one of the directors even worked in the latter studio). I admire the effort, as it goes to show that animation is not just "kids stuff." However, that kind of gimmick can only take it so far. 

I wasn't fond of the, ironically, juvenile humor. It features a lot of toilet humor, black comedy, double entendres (a hot dog and bun, get it?), pop cultural references, and several droppings of the F-bomb. I've said this before, but I'm not a fan of R-rated comedies because I found them focusing more on the rating rather than actually being funny. There have been some gems for me, though. Early this year, I praised Deadpool which I found surprisingly funny because it got creative with its raunchiness. I can't say the same for this one.

I saw potential in some of its humor but I didn't find myself busting a gut laughing. I got a couple of chuckles, but most of the time, I had a smirk on my face combined with an eyebrow raise, which illustrates my confusion. I even entertained a friend of mine who I saw it with when I was seriously squicked out by that ending scene. Anyone who's seen it, you know the one. Also, I didn't find the puns very funny. It's not on the same level of annoyance as the awful food puns from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, but when I can't laugh at a Hitler-like character wanting to exterminate the Juice, something is wrong.

I know there is also some social commentary in there, like religion being bad or something and having some moral like putting aside one's differences to work together. This sort of thing lacks subtlety, though, and it wants to rub it in our faces.

Speaking of rubbing it in our faces, Sausage Party wants to constantly remind us that it is not for children and even pretend that it's the first R-rated animated movie. It's not. We've had South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut and a lot of R-rated Anime films, so the shock value that it has is pretty much gone. It needs to do more than just drop F-bombs and be offensive.

Sausage Party is a valiant effort, I'll give it that, but it didn't do it for me. I laughed more at the trailer than I did with this movie. It has some things going for it, but if a comedy cannot make me laugh, it fails. It's practically my catchphrase the more I repeat it in my reviews. You could say that it left a bad taste in my mouth. Sorry, but that's all I got in terms of food jokes.

However, a lot of people find it funny and clever, and there's nothing wrong with that. Comedy is subjective after all, so Sausage Party earns my rating of...

THINK FOR YOURSELF

Oh, and the villain? He was pointless. He was there just for the movie to make a joke that he is a literal douche. It's not clever.