REVIEW: Sausage Party

Courtesy of Sony

It’s a massive understatement to say that Sausage Party, a wildly funny animated satire conceived by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Jonah Hill, isn’t appropriate for children. Honestly, it isn’t even appropriate for a lot of adults. Although it’s hilarious, clever and surprisingly insightful, you’ll probably know where you stand on the film’s boundary-shattering humor by the end of the opening musical number (co-written by Disney legend Alan Menken).

I’m not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but even I found myself blushing and covering my face a few times. It’s as if the creative team set a goal to one-up the craziness on display in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut and Team America: World Police. While Sausage Party never reaches the heights of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s crude brilliance, it might be the closest I’ve seen anyone get.

On the surface, at least, the story is something straight out of Pixar. Frank (Rogen) is a hot dog who has lived his entire life on a supermarket shelf among countless other foods. His dream is to be selected by the gods and finally see what life is like outside those sliding glass doors. He thinks it means he’ll finally be paired with Brenda (Kristen Wiig), the bun he’s in love with, but he soon learns the shocking truth: they exist only to be eaten by giant monsters.

In order to survive, he’s forced to team up with a host of quirky characters, including a neurotic bagel (Edward Norton, doing a killer Woody Allen impression), an ill-tempered lavash (David Krumholtz) and a sexually-conflicted taco (Salma Hayek). Along the way, they encounter other foods like a suicidal bottle of honey mustard (Danny McBride), a box of grits (Craig Robinson) and a horribly inappropriate bottle of whiskey (Bill Hader).

Sausage Party unleashes the filth and foul language from the start, letting viewers know up front what they’re in for. Fortunately, the people in my screening seemed to do their homework. There were no clueless parents fleeing the auditorium in horror, dragging their shell-shocked kids behind them. (Although the devious side of me secretly might’ve liked to witness that.)

However, once the shock value wears off – which happens fast, at least until the bonkers conclusion – viewers are left with an unexpectedly sharp satire of organized religion and its cultural ramifications. Each section of the supermarket believes its interpretation of the gods and life outside the supermarket is the right one, and they have little patience for foods who hold different views. Rogen and his collaborators are also unafraid to tackle the racially problematic past of the Disney cartoons they’re parodying, utilizing blatantly offensive stereotypes for foods of various cultures.

The film is crammed with some of the most insane sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie, including a hilarious Saving Private Ryan reference, a food-versus-humans battle with a surprisingly high body count, and a victory celebration that will be etched in my brain until the day I die.

While it may not hit all the satirical targets it’s aiming for, Sausage Party is still a creative and funny success. I’m astonished it got made, and even more shocked that it’s cleaning up at the box office. What a twisted surprise at the end of a lackluster summer.

Sausage Party is rated R for strong crude sexual content, pervasive language and drug use.

Grade: B