Sausage Party (REVIEW)
Written By Jacob Chimilar (@sweetlows)
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have teamed up over the years to bring us a ton of comedies with varying degrees of success. Their latest is a very much R rated animated comedy starring Rogen along with a whole host of other celebrity voice actors that you see so often in animated features. It's the story of the products in a grocery store believing that humans are gods and when they are chosen they are sent to the great beyond. What they learn when a jar of honey mustard is returned is it is in fact not the glorious land they all expect it to be. However, no one believes him and they carry on. When Frank a hot dog and Brenda a bun along with a few others get into a cart crash at the super market they are left to return to their stations but they face challenges along the way that test their faith in more ways than one.
I'll give the guys some credit, they actually do try and go after topics like religion, race relations, and stereotypes. They do however do it in the most on the nose ways possible which takes some of the edge off by basically saying/heavily winking at the thing they are satirizing. However, at least they do try a bit to be more on top of some genuinely funny food related humor. There are quite a few laughs in this movie, there weren't any that fell completely flat but there also weren't really any that had me laughing hard either. It was a very solid comedy with some great performances by everyone involved. The main antagonist over stays his welcome at times with the shtick he puts on but aside from him everyone else is pretty much on point throughout the run time. I don't really want to spoil too many things but if you don't mind an over abundance of swearing, to which either I acclimatized to or it was just less frequent in the second half, I think it's worth a shot if you like Seth Rogen's style of humor. There are plenty of sex jokes but they aren't the only source of laughs thankfully and I honestly think this was a well done movie that had some effort put into it to make something different and maybe not special but certainly very entertaining.
It goes along at a very quick pace and is only 90 minutes long and it doesn't appear to slow down at any point. I think having an animation constraint put a nice limitation on making something that could have been too long and allowed them to be a bit more ruthless with how long the jokes go for which can be a problem in some comedies from groups like this that enjoy riffing for endless minutes because of their great improv skills.
If you are looking for something a little bit dirty and a tad high concept with some (obvious) satire mixed in I think Sausage Party is one to go out and see, especially if Rogen is one who tickles your funny bone. They have delivered a hit with this one and the animation hold up very well given the budget. It's a good time at the theatre and it'll make you laugh the next time you enter a grocery store.
