Sausage Party

Mature themed cartoon movies are nothing new in cinema. Ralph Bakshi, the godfather of mature animation, released the first ever “X” rated animated feature in 1972, Fritz the Cat, based on the comic book by Robert Crumb. In 2016, Seth Rogen is looking to up the ante in both production value and offensiveness for an “R” rated animated feature. Can Sausage Party be funny, offensive, and have a story you care about?

Sausage Party begins in a local supermarket called Shopwell’s. We meet Frank, a hot dog and Brenda, a hot dog bun which long to be together one day when they are picked up off the shelves. They live on the supermarket shelves along with many other products in hopes of being chosen by the gods (humans) to be taken to the “Great Beyond.” The “Great Beyond” or “Food Heaven” is through the sliding glass doors of the store in which the foods live. One day a jar of mustard is returned to the store and put back on the shelves. The mustard proceeds to tell the rest of the food on the shelves that all is not well for them in the “Great Beyond.”

Sausage Party is the second worst picture of the Summer and of 2016, right behind Ghostbusters. Sausage Party is utterly unfunny, full of bathroom humor, awful sex jokes and lacks any clever ideas. It’s vile, vulgar, and puerile in equal measure. When the film doesn’t know how to further its story, it doubles down on its own vileness. This is an outright mocking of the family friendly and Christian animated program, Veggie Tales. Sausage Party’s overarching message is to dismantle any belief system that you believe in and if you do you must be some kind of uninformed zombie follower. Sausage Party relies on stereotypes and racial prejudices that you’d think any social justice warrior would be posting to Twitter in disgust about. The only aspect of the film that remotely has any semblance of a unique idea is how they broached Jewish and Palestinian relations. Even that sliver of creativity is all flushed down the toilet in one of the most disgusting finales of recent memory that would make anyone older than 30 years old cringe. Just as an aside, the irony of the orgiastic finale is once you see it in context of the story, morality is no longer a factor once your beliefs are put into question debauchery of all stripes are not off limits.
Sausage Party is a self indulgent piece rotten garbage by Seth Rogen.

Not even the musical stylings of Disney’s Alan Menken nor the Pixar inspired animation can save this awful and truly offensive film. I may not be young enough to appreciate the film, but does that say more about myself or the younger movie goer and why extreme vulgarity and audacious acts of vileness is the measure of comedy? I’d like to know when the general public is going to realize that Seth Rogen’s only talent as of late is to appeal to the lowest common denominator of film fan. But, I guess, if you are good at something and Hollywood keeps throwing money at you why stop? Seth Rogen’s movie ideas are past their expiration date. Sausage Party is the same stale processed Seth burger, but I’m sure with the money it makes we’ll see Rogen or a form of him at the local megaplex sooner than I’d like.