Review – Sausage Party

Sausage Party is possibly the most vulgar movie I have ever seen.  It makes South Park: Bigger Longer, and Uncut (1999) look like Sesame Street.  It is a coarse, crude, gross, hour and a half-long sex joke that is uproariously funny, incredibly quotable, and wonderfully animated.

Sausage Party is about a hot dog, Frank (voiced by Seth Rogen), who is patiently waiting to be purchased with his hot dog bun girlfriend, Brenda (Kristen Wiig) so that he can finally be inside of her (I’m not joking).  When they finally get picked, the cart they are in gets into an accident that causes chaos and death amongst the foods and separates Frank and Brenda from their original packages.  As their friends in their packages head home with the humans, Frank, Brenda, and their new friends, Teresa the Taco (Salma Hayek), Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton), and Lavash (David Krumholtz), try to get back to their respective homes while discovering the truth about humans.  Oh, and there is a literal and figurative Douche (Nick Kroll) that is out to kill them for ruining his chance to be used.

So, the plot is a bit wild, but the movie stays pretty contained.  Majority of the film is set in the grocery store, as Frank and Brenda roam all the aisles trying to get back to their home while also finding out the truth about the humans and fending off the Douche.  I loved all the set pieces of the different aisles.  From the Mexican food bar to the alcohol party, every aisle is its own unique personality and adds more life to the movie.

We don’t spend as much time outside of the store.  It mainly focus on Barry (Michael Cera), a disfigured hot dog who breaks free and makes it his goal to make it back to the store and warn Frank of what the humans are doing.  These scenes are used sparingly, which is wise, because I don’t know how much more they could have done with this.

The voice work in the film is great.  Featuring Rogan usuals like James Franco, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Paul Rudd, Craig Robinson, and Danny McBride, among others, every character is unique and funny.  I absolutely loved Robinson’s Mr. Grits and Nick Kroll as the Douche, and the back and forth between Norton and Krumhotlz was superb.  The diversity in food and their different ethnic backgrounds is genius.

Sausage Party dabbles into more than just dick jokes and inappropriate humor.  In the most bizarre way, the movie is really about religion and the after life, and people’s beliefs.  It also perfectly satirizes racism and culture clashes, with the Jewish bagel verbally sparring with the Armenian lavash and talking about how the Crackers took over Mr. Grits’ (who is black) aisle.  These two things added another layer to the movie that made it smarter than just your average gross-out sex comedy.

The last 20 minutes of this movie are some of the wildest 20 minutes of cinema I have seen all year.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but it is an explosive, ridiculous, violent climax, with a huge payoff and self-aware final scene.  It caught me completely off-guard and was the most messed up bow to tie the movie together.

Sausage Party proves once again that Seth Rogan and his team of writers, directors, and actors are as brilliant as they were ten years ago.  This is an original, bizarre, irreverent, endlessly funny movie.  It is probably the best pure comedy of 2016 so far and one that will only get better the more you watch it.

MY RATING – 4/4

Did you see Sausage Party?  What did you think?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter @kevflix and follow me on Facebook!