Director: Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon
Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Duration: 99 minutes
Sausage Party (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Face it, even as adults we still enjoy cartoons, be it those we grew up with, those we watch with our kids, or simply guilty pleasures. Over the years a fair amount of adult cartoon shows were released, such as South Park, Family Guy, King of the Hill and so on. Sadly, the same adult audience never really received an actual animated movie which is exclusive for them. Sausage Party, a movie that has been in development for quite some time, and has received countless rejections by big producers, finally saw the light last year and now that it has hit the stores, we get the chance to take a gander at it and see how the secret life of ‘food’ fits into our adult interests.
Unlike Toy Story, it will not be toy figures that will take the centre stage, but actual processed food that is sentient. Their movements, speech and of course ‘human-like’ appearances are invisible for the human eye, but nonetheless all is well in the convenience store ‘Shopwell’. Everyone hopes to get picked by the gods (humans) to see ‘The Great Beyond’. Little do the sausages, buns, fruits, snacks and so on, know that going outside will mean their demise. This brings us to Frank (Seth Rogen), his fellow sausages, and the love of his life, Brenda (Kristen Wiig), who hope to be picked together and become one in The Great Beyond (this movie is filled with sexual references beyond proportions).
After starting off the day with a song directed towards the gods, Frank and Brenda actually get picked together, which is a cause for celebration. When suddenly the jar of honey mustard (Danny McBride) starts freaking out that he gets chosen again (he was returned), he tells everyone the ugly truth about The Great Beyond, but everyone just ignores him, until he tries to commit suicide by jumping out of the cart. When Frank and Brenda jump out of their package to save him, all hell breaks loose when another shopping cart hits the one they’re currently in. A lot of food items tumble to their deaths, resulting in a gruesome scene. When the vaginal Douche (Nick Kroll) blames Frank for what happened, he tries to dispose of the sausage and the bun, but gets stopped in time by an employee of the store who throws him in the bin. They are left in the store, with Frank curious to find out more about what Honey Mustard told him, while Brenda just wants to go back to their shelf, jump in another package and hopefully stay fresh enough to get chosen again. Little do they know what is currently happening to their delicious friends outside of the store.
Overall the pacing is quite right for a movie such as this, where enough story value is given in alternation with funny scenes. Nonetheless, the movie spans about an hour and a half, and truth be told, they could have cut it short by ten to fifteen minutes, as some ‘dirty’ scenes feel a bit farfetched and redundant. That being said, you’ll never truly be bored as the movie is simply full of puns, background actions and overall enough going on onscreen that it might actually pay off to watch the movie once more to make sure you’ve seen it all.
There is one thing that this movie does perfectly, namely the visual representation that is certainly on par with a Pixar production. Of course, things are a bit more comical than more realistic looking Disney productions, but the animations, the fluent motions and many details are simply handled in a superb fashion. If not for the dirty humor, this movie is still a spectacle to behold, purely for the animations.
Acting performances are actually quite convincing in this movie, even though we never actually see the actors behind the face of the different foods and packages. There’s a massive cast supporting this movie, such as Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Michael Sera, Salma Hayek, James Franco and many – many more. This is quite uplifting for the movie, as the story isn’t truly that much to make this flick work with a subpar cast.
While the special features on the Blu-ray release may not be the lengthiest, they are still worth watching. You’ll get treated to a gag reel, the atmosphere in the voice recording booth, how different takes were tried, and a small featurette about the rather serious movie used in this silly movie. That being said, two extras stand out a bit, namely the one about the rejection the team had to deal with, seeing this movie is pretty much ‘dirty smut’ in the eyes of many, and the other feature being a small advertisement in a Disney-like format, which paints a great picture of the movie.
Conclusion
In the end, Sausage Party left us with very mixed feelings, as the movie certainly achieved what it set out to do, namely shock the audience, with rather dirty humor. We were certainly shocked, we laughed a fair amount, while we also witnessed dirty scenes that were simply ‘too much’, thus in the end we were both amused and disgusted, while we have a fairly strong stomach for these kind of things. That being said, Sausage Party is still worth the watch if you’re into dirty humor, a lot of swearing, food and of course a massive cast behind the mic.
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[…] watching the animation movie Sausage Party, in which all groceries in the supermarket come to life and lead their own life including parties […]
[…] always think twice about where it came from or how it would react to us eating it. The movie Sausage Party did give a nice twist on how processed foods view us and actually left some second-guessing their […]