Directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon
Starring Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill
Released August 12th, 2016
Rated R
The food at Shopwell’s grocery store is always so excited for the store to open that they sing a song each morning to celebrate another day of hope and opportunity. Corn leads the sing-a-long, because corn has the best voice.
The foodstuffs are excited about the possibility of being chosen by the Gods and taken to The Great Beyond to spend the rest of their existence in ecstasy.
Will the package of sausages that includes Barry (Michael Cera), Carl (Jonah Hill) and Frank (Seth Rogen) be chosen today? How about the package of buns that includes Frank’s love Brenda (Kristen Wiig)? Will they finally be able to exit their packaging and be together in The Great Beyond?
“Sausage Party” posits that if you strip away our perceived differences, all we really want is to engage in a massive orgy. It’s hard to argue with that logic.
The promise of an eternity of bliss is so strong that nobody believes Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) when he is returned to the store and tells them that it’s all a lie. The crazed Honey Mustard drops the knowledge that their Gods are in fact monsters who will consume them once they leave the store.
Honey Mustard tells Frank to seek out someone who knows the truth; the old Native American bottle of liquor, Firewater (Bill Hader). Setting out to find Firewater, Frank and Brenda team up with Kareem Abdul Lavash (David Krumholtz) and Sammy Bagel, Jr. (Edward Norton, doing his best Woody Allen).
Sausage Party is the rare kind of film where you really can’t predict what will happen next. Frank and the gang are being pursued by an angry Douche (Nick Kroll) who blames them for his deformity, and when Carl and Barry are confronted by a guy on bath salts (James Franco), it’s up to a piece of chewed up, discarded bubblegum (Scott Eastwood) to save them.
The voice cast is obviously having a ball, from Paul Rudd as Darren, the manager of Shopwell’s, to Salma Hayek as Teresa, a lesbian taco.
Sausage Party is Rated R, as in “Restricted” as in “Don’t let your kids watch this.” From the chinese food section to the mexican food section, every aisle of Shopwell’s contains another ethnic stereotype. This is by no means a politically correct film.
Somebody get the producers of The Golden Compass on the phone, because Sausage Party pulls off something that 2007 film could not. Sausage Party not only says that the promise of Heaven is a lie, but also that you can (and probably should) kill your Gods.
Sausage Party posits that if you strip away our perceived differences, all we really want is to engage in a massive orgy. It’s hard to argue with that logic.
Sausage Party has a lot in common with South Park, as it offers social commentary wrapped in a hailstorm of vulgarities. It will make you laugh and hopefully make you think. After all, what if food really DID have feelings? Wait, animals have feelings! Great. Now I’m going to have to become a vegan.