Sausage Party - movie review

Sausage Party

Plot: A sausage strives to discover the truth about his existence.
Cast: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill
Directors: Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon
Rating: 15 (very strong language, strong sex references)
Runtime: 1hr 29 mins
Release Date: Friday 2nd September 2016

So this is what taking acid feels like? Wow. I mean, just wow. I honestly have no words. My eyes, ears and whole body is absolutely shocked with what I have just seen. I do not have a bloody clue how this movie was even allowed to be made but whoever spearheaded this thing, thank you. Thank you so much. I can officially state that Sausage Party is crazy, weird, bizarre, strange, raucous and most of all, freaking hysterical.


The film focuses on Frank, a sausage/hot-dog/frankfurter, voiced by Seth Rogen who also writes and produces. We follow Frank in his escapade to reach 'The Great Beyond' but when he discovers that things aren't as they seem, it's up to Frank to warn the others of their impending doom. Frank was a lovable main character and is very charismatic to watch. He is presented as a perfect character, well, as perfect as a sausage can be so there isn't a great deal of depth but who cares? He just wants to have sex the entire film. That's his depth. Literally... Rogen is a more than suitable voice for Frank and it's good to see him having a change of character rather than a stoner over and over again. The object of Frank's horniness and lust is Brenda (Wiig), a hotdog bun with substantial buns. Wiig, much like Rogen, was absolutely no problem as the voice of Brenda. There isn't much to her. She's pretty bland but she definitely has some absolute killer jokes that had me really laughing. But these two are just the tip of the iceberg as Sausage Party is crammed to the brink full of fantastic comedians voicing the most absurd of food or shopping products. The first of those is Jonah Hill who voices Carl, a fellow sausage and friend of Frank. He isn't in it a great deal and features more prominently in the opening but similar to Wiig, Hill has some fantastic corkers that left me uncontrollably giggling. There's also Bill Hader who voices a few characters but predominantly Firewater, a Native Indian alcoholic drink who leads a group that know 'the terrible truth'. He spends his time getting high off of a kazoo and that's it. Hader is one of my all time favourite SNL cast members for his ability to become so many different characters and he's just so good as Firewater. 

But there were some true standout characters who blew my mind and had me howling from the aisles. Firstly is Michael Cera as Barry, a slightly deformed sausage who gets bullied. At the start, I thought Cera would bore me. He was just this helpless little cocktail sausage but then, in the second half, my God! He does a complete 180 and basically steals the show. Jesus Christ, Barry gets dark. I'm talking psychopathic dark. Best of all, it's so goddamn funny. I really can't stress this enough, Sausage Party is one of the best comedies this year. We also have James Franco playing one of the few humans in the film. What I loved is that Sausage Party leads you to believe that Franco's character is going to head in one direction and then BOOM! Completely the opposite. The humour is incredibly unpredictable that for most of the time, you can never see the jokes coming. Danny McBride voices a Honey Mustard jar and he really doesn't have a big role but it's significant to the motion of the film and just like usual, he's hilarious. Even Ant-Man made into the film. Paul Rudd plays another human who runs the store that the food are kept in. Honestly, I had no idea it was him until the credits rolled. Darren (Rudd's character) doesn't come to play until the finale and whilst I'll cover the finale a bit later, he's stupendously funny. The closest we get to a villain in Sausage Party is Nick Kroll as a douche. Just to clarify, the character he's playing is a douche but he is also an ACTUAL douche. No word of a lie. Kroll plays up the dickishness of this Douche and let's just say, we see the Douche in action. It's not pretty and my jaw was certainly hitting the floor by that point. However, two characters that are just the epitome of the madness and complete mind-boggling insanity are voiced by Edward Norton and David Krumholtz. Respectively, they play Sammy Bagel Jr and Kareem Abdul Lavash. On face value, it does seem a little confusing as to how they would be the best part of Sausage Party, but then let me tell you that Sammy Bagel Jr is Jewish and the Lavash is Arab so they basically spend their time having a 'Palestinian-type' debate over their aisles. Right, going into Sausage Party I was expecting gross-out humour not a deep and profound insight into a viewpoint on the Palestinian conflict. I mean, what? I had to double take. In a film where we have a lesbian taco voiced by Salma Hayek, a gum made to look like Stephen Hawking and the Sauerkrauts that act like Nazis wanting to exterminate ze Juice, there is a bagel and Lavash discussing land rights and their inability to share. WTF!!!!!

With this being the first ever adult rated CGI animated film, Sausage Party certainly earns that rating. If you've seen the trailers, you'd know what the tone of this film is like but believe me when I say that you haven't seen anything yet. It gets dark, it gets dirty (really freaking dirty) and is for ADULTS ONLY. I read an article in which the red band trailer was shown at a screening for Finding Dory and left the children scarred. Leave the children at home for this unless you want them needing extreme therapy for the rest of their childhood. After this, if you mention objects coming to life, they will give you an absolute death stare. It will trigger Vietnam like flashbacks to the day they saw a Baby Carrot be munched to pieces whilst screaming for her mother. Like I said, Sausage Party easily earns a 15 for the UK. I'm surprised it didn't get an 18 and in the US, it apparently was close to earning an NC-17, a rating reserved for the most extreme of films. One of the reasons as to why this animated film has got the rating it has, is because of the insane amount of swearing. Holy shit!! If you don't like swearing or are put off by a lot of it, first things first, you are going to hate Sausage Party and secondly, grow up a little. It's just words. It does get to a point where I began to notice just how much they were swearing where you have the Douche who literally says every word under the sun but it didn't bother me. Instead, I just saw it as them aiming for this rating and running with it. I have a game for you, at least for those who are able. Watch this film with a lot (I do mean a lot) of alcohol and when any character swears (no matter how obscene), take a shot. I'm not even kidding when I say that by the end of the film, you will be 100% sober. Yeah, completely sober. That's because you will be dead. Unless your name is Ozzy Osbourne, you cannot have that amount of alcohol and survive. It's impossible. 

The story of Sausage Party is very basic and it is just food vs humans. It dabbles in some deeper ideas like the idea of creation but it does what it says on the tin. Now, about the third act. This is going to be entirely spoiler free but I have to talk about it. We have the film's ludicrous conclusion and then we get to 'The Scene'. I have seen some odd and terrifying things in my life. I have been subjected to 2 Girls 1 Cup and that looks tame in comparison to this one. Stuff happens during this that no film has even attempted let alone an animated one. Don't get me wrong, this moment is one of the funniest in the film and it will stick with me but I also remember that 2 Girls 1 Cup video and that's not a good thing. It comes from out of nowhere and if this sort of things doesn't sit right with you, prepare the bleach because this goes on for quite a while. It's the type of scene that if my parents walked in on me watching it, I'd switch to porn because that would be easier to explain. As for the actual animation, it's fine. It's nothing incredible like at the level of Pixar but considering that it's parodying it, Sausage Party doesn't need to be this animated marvel. There's even a musical number plonked in there composed by Alan Menken, the mind behind the songs of Beauty & The Beast and Aladdin. Instead of "I can show you the world. Shining, shimmering, splendid." we get "But once we're out the doors, it's not a sin. For us to let you slip it in."

In all honesty, Sausage Party will appeal to some, be loved by some, be hated by some and absolutely despised to the point of anger by some. For me, it was everything I hoped it was and so much more. I was laughing from start to finish and there are countless moments that I just have to think about and I'll start laughing.

My Verdict: 8.5/10

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