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Sausage Party - Movie Review

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4 stars

Eat your heart out, Tex Avery.  The cartoon spoof to end all others has arrived.   Sausage Party, while often crass, is a banging affair.  It’s safe to say that – in an animated war against humans – processed meat products win in the end.  The highs of the movie might not be for everyone (which is the ONLY reason I'm not giving it a 5) but, for the brave, know that you’ve likely not experienced anything like this comic madness before.    

Sausage Party is – and I kid you not – so unrelentingly funny that you will have to sit through it three times in order to catch all the jokes that you missed the first two times.  That’s how hard and how long your laughing fits will be and, if we are to judge a comedy by the amount of laughter it causes, then Sausage Party is as good as it gets.

In the world imagined by these comic writers, there’s no safe place for Disney to hide.  Our food is waging war against us.  Why there aren’t more animated comedies for adults is beyond me.  Sausage Party proves there is an avenue for such a thing.  Hopefully, it is profitable.  Hollywood isn’t known for being subtle and I hope they don’t flood the marketplace with animated feature for adults but there really should be no surprise that the film works on every level. 

Now I know you have seen the raunchy trailers but Sausage Party is so much more than what you think it is.  I swear to you.  Of course, Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg’s animated film is not for kids.  At all.  Do NOT make that mistake. And bring your wee one to this movie.  Please.  I beg you.  It’s rated-R and it is a HARD R for a damn good reason.  The comedy is beyond profane, wickedly crude, full of sexual innuendos, and has enough drug references to give the audience itself a contact high after each and every showing. 

While directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan keep things lively, their cast – featuring the voice talents (and probably adlibbing) of Rogen himself, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera, Nick Kroll, James Franco, Salma Hayek, Edward Norton, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Paul Rudd, Craig Robinon, and David Krumholtz – do much of the heavy lifting in this tale of a grocery store gone wild.   There’s no controlling this cast and, for this movie, that’s a damn good thing. 

As imagined by the creators of Superbad, it’s coming on the 4th of July and there is grilling to be done.  Time to hit the grocery store and stock up on wieners and buns and hamburger meat.  Of course, Frank (Rogen) and his girlfriend Brenda (Wiig) think that going home with humans means they will have ascended into The Great Beyond and FINALLY be able to have sexual relations with each other because, of course, the wiener slides into the, well, you get it.  That’s the simple part.  The narrative itself – with wild subplots and theories on the afterlife – is another thing entirely.

This is the story of what happens when your food items realize the truth about being purchased.  Sammy (Ed Norton doing a damn good Woody Allen impression) is the bagel that reveals the truth: humans DEVOUR food.  In other words, there are no Pearly Gates to walk through.  And if there is no Heaven, then there is no sex.  And Frank is having none of THAT.  You can probably see where this movie is headed: the existential crisis of a hot dog.  The food puns are all over the place and so are the innuendos, which are, in turn, followed by clever analogies about the truth of their existence. 

Nick Kroll as the feminine hygiene product out for revenge causes most everything in Frank and Brenda’s worried mind to expand to the breaking point.  As stated earlier, this party is raunchy as hell and the subplots – one involving Cera and Franco which brings to mind some of the wilder moments of subversion found in This is The End – give the film a hefty lift.  Sausage Party, while extremely funny, is also a tad brilliant at times; full of insight that might not work in other animated flicks.  At least they shouldn’t.  Somehow, though, it is pulled off here with fantastic results; your gut will hurt so much from the laughing that your brain will have to play catch-up to all the religious allegory on its grocery shelves.   

So what’s next for the dynamic duo?  They close a chapter with this eight-years-in-the-making labor of love.  Dare they follow it with another?  Maybe inspired by the lyrics of Banjo & Sullivan’s Dick Soup?  Who knows?!  All I can say is that, if you are at all in favor of exercising the muscles of your mouth, then you should run and not walk to catch one of the bravest film releases by a major Hollywood studio this year.    

All hot dogs go to heaven.   Or do they?

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[tab title="Film Details"]

Sausage Party - Movie Review

MPAA Rating: R for strong crude sexual content, pervasive language, and drug use
Runtime:
89 mins
Director
: Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon
Writer:
Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir
Cast:
Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill
Genre
: Animation | Comedy
Tagline:
A hero will rise
Memorable Movie Quote: "We're the Non-Perishables, motherfucker."
Distributor:
Columbia Pictures
Official Site: http://www.sausagepartymovie.com/site/
Release Date:
August 12, 2016
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
No details available.
Synopsis: Sausage Party is about one sausage leading a group of supermarket products on a quest to discover the truth about their existence and what really happens when they become chosen to leave the grocery store.

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[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]

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