Sausage Party
Directors: Conrad Vernon, Greg Tiernan
Actors: Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen
Release Date: Friday 2nd September 2016
Genre(s): Factual
Running time: 96 minutes
Wanna know what would happen if the Pixar guys dropped acid while making the first Toy Story movie? Well about twenty minutes into Sausage Party you'll have a fair idea.
An all star cast led by Seth Rogen and Kristen Wiig voice, eh, food in your average middle-American supermarket. In a fairly cutthroat metaphor for organised religion, the food believe that when a shopper buys them, they reach the "promised land" and generally get all the good stuff. But when a jar of Honey Mustard makes it back alive, he spills the horrific truth.
Look, there's no getting around the fact that Sausage Party is about the crassest thing to hit a cinema in a long time. But people said that about Team America and look how revered as genius that is now. The parallels to Trey Parker and Matt Stone's satirical opus are pretty obvious - that was puppets and this is CGI animated, so ostensibly mediums that are aimed at kids. That's naturally to add shock value and it does, but the gags still come thick and fast and are consistently funny.
It's hard to imagine someone paying to see this on the basis of the trailers and being disappointed. Everything there is expanded upon and the characters and humour surprisingly innovative. Sure, Rogen and co aren't against going for the low hanging fruit, actually at points it soundly embraces it, but there's a clear thought process here and every supermarket item has a personality... and enjoys cursing a fuckload.
There was a worry that it could run out of steam, after all, how much can you squeeze out of essentially a one gag movie? Well, a fair amount it turns out. Rogen's Frank (gettit?) is determined to find the truth and essentially the film is him meeting character after character who reveal just that.
Somewhat invariably it goes a little too meta at the end as it looks to reach a somewhat feasible conclusion, but for the most part Sausage Party is a foulmouthed blast.
Fans of crass comedy and Rogen in general will enjoy the hell out of this.
