Movie Reaction: Sausage Party

Formula: Veggietales / Team America: World Police

I'm not going to change your mind about Sausage Party. In most ways, it is exactly what it seems. It's an animated movie with with a hard-R rating that features excessive profanity, violence, and a lot of explicit sex-humor. It's from the guys who made Superbad, Pineapple Express, and This Is The End. I won't pretend that this is something like Eye in the Sky that starts slow, then wins you over by the end. If you don't like it within the first few minutes, then you aren't making it through to the end to appreciate what works well in the film.

I was very hesitant about this movie. I love Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and company. I could not be in their camp any more than I already am, and even still, Sausage Party is a big risk. Adult animation is tough to pull off, and the tone of this film in particular is even tougher given the layers of irony. If there was any more overtly appealing alternative this weekend, I probably would've opted to wait until this went to video. I'm glad I didn't wait though.

Sausage Party is a simple enough movie on the surface. It's a food Toy Story, where food is alive but people can't see it. The movie centers on a pack of sausages and buns with familiar voices including Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Kristen Wiig, and Michael Cera. The food in the store has built up a mythology that being bought and leaving the story is the same as dying and going to heaven. After a jar of mustard is returned to the store and reports back to the other food about what really happens to them (they get eaten), they all have to decide whether to believe him or not. There's a journey across the store, a douchey villain, and a "come to Jesus" moment, as you'd expect, and that's about it in the broad strokes.

This is the best screenplay that has come from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (and Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffer). That isn't something I say lightly - As I've already mentioned, I'm a superfan -  but it's the truth. This script is as dense with jokes and wordplay as anything I've seen. It reminded me of Airplane. That movie doesn't work without full commitment to what it's doing. If Airplane would've pulled back at all on what it was doing, it would've gone from brilliant to bad quickly (See: Epic Movie, for instance). Sausage Party walks that same tightrope. It is fully committed to the world it has created. They fit in every single bit of wordplay you can imagine. Sometimes it's homonyms. Sometimes it's double meanings. Sometimes it's playing on ethnicities or shapes. It doesn't let up and that's why it works. It's a constant, almost exhausting barrage of jokes ranging from high to low brow, subtle to overt. I'm in awe of this screenplay.

And it's not all jokes either. There's some substance to the story. There's a pretty intelligent dissection of organized religion and sexual repression in there. I was continually surprised by how many ways they found to twist the concept of the film to make the story work on another level. It takes smart people to make something this profoundly dumb work and have meaning. I'll accept a lot of criticism that someone wants to throw at this movie, but it should never be directed at the script.

The voice cast is all the regulars you've come to expect. If you've seen a Judd Apatow produced movie, then you know who shows up: Rogen, Hill, Wiig, Cera, James Franco, Bill Hader, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, and Nick Kroll. A couple outsiders worth mentioning are Edward Norton who is doing his best Woody Allen impression as a bagel and Salma Hayek as a sexy taco (Hey, I didn't say the jokes weren't obvious). No one is really stretching their voices here, doing anything new, or playing against type. I like that crew though, so I have no complaints.

None of this would work if it didn't feel authentic. Rogen and Goldberg needed this to play like a legitimate animated movie that would regularly be geared toward children. Like the best of Mel Brooks' movies, this doesn't work if it doesn't start from a place of authenticity. So, they brought in co-directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon. Vernon has directed a few Dreamworks Animation movies and Tiernan, no kidding, is known for Thomas the Tank Engine movies. The film doesn't work without people like them playing it straight.

I came into Sausage Party expecting maybe a couple good laughs over 90 increasingly tedious minutes. However, it exceeded all of my expectations. There's a few buzz-worthy scenes that will dominate all the discussion about the movie, and rightfully so, but this is a very full, a very complete, and a very funny movie. It's the kind of movie that you do or don't like on a gut level. There's going to be plenty of people who will watch 2 minutes of this and it just won't work for them (I'm reminded a lot of Team America in that way). For anyone who thinks this kind of movie could work for them though, I highly recommend it.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend