Sausage Party Review

Sausage Party is an animated R-rated comedy from Superbad creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Apparently Rogan, Goldberg, as well as frequent co-star Jonah Hill have been trying to get Sausage Party into theaters for eight years, and upon watching, you can see why their journey was difficult. Although the concept is original, the movie is for lack of a better word, outrageous. But sadly, the outrageous setups did not overpower the jokes. Most of the movie takes place inside of the supermarket, where the groceries awaken with a song eagerly anticipating being chosen by humans or “gods” to leave the store, or as they put it “experience the great beyond”. Seth Rogan stars as Frank, a hot dog in a package of eight who desires nothing more than to enter the great beyond along with his girlfriend Brenda (Kristen Wiig), a hot dog bun.  Frank’s pack of dogs, that also includes a deformed link named Barry (Michael Cera) all get chosen and are ready to leave the store. Their dreams are tainted when a bottle of honey mustard (Danny McBride) is returned, and has a horrific story to tell regarding his events outside of the store. Sausage Party goes out of its way to offend a lot of people…a lot. But at times it seems that offending people was the goal rather than actually entertaining its audience. This entire film is an allegory on race relations, religion, and sexuality. Is the commentary relevant? Sure. Is it necessary? Not to this extent. A CGI animated film about talking groceries trying to leave the supermarket is a funny concept on its own, and does not need as many preachy undertones. When the socioeconomic themes are referenced, it is not subtle any way. The audience will have no issue understanding what the characters are talking about. This weakens the film in some ways, because the audience is so busy figuring out if they should agree or disagree with the characters’ opinions, they forget to listen for the joke. As far as the animation, the CG is honestly not very good. Audiences have gotten used to the beautiful presentations that have presented to us recently with this Disney’s Zootopia, Dreamworks’ Kung Fu Panda 3, as well Finding Dory from Pixar. So if Rogen and friends are going to be the first to present an R-rated alternative,  it should be as equally visually stimulating  There are parts of Sausage Party that look flat, two dimensional, and during the opening song in particular, unfinished. Sausage Party is pretty short sitting at 84 minutes, but it is definitely entertaining from beginning to end. And be forewarned, the ending is not for the faint of heart. It is also the best part of the movie, a part when Sausage Party truly delivers on its R-rated promise. The swearing is high, the dialogue is in your face, but sadly it is nothing audiences have not seen before. I just hope that the next film from this team decides to spend a little more time on the animation and the jokes, and maybe we'll get an R-rated masterpiece on our hands.