There have been a few too many "more of the same" type movies at theaters this summer. Flat, big budget blockbusters and sequels without an ounce of creativity or originality puking out of the Hollywood industrial complex, delivering an astounding amount of expensive, vapid horse shit.
Sausage Party, the animated hellcat from writer-producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, is the first big studio film in a long time with screaming levels of originality. It's a profanity laden, blasphemous middle finger to the movie making establishment that thinks it's okay to turn out sequels and comic book movies that suck as long as people shell out for them. It couldn't be more fun, and it's like nothing you've seen before.
In a sunny supermarket, a bunch of vegetables, hot dogs and buns wake up and sing a happy song, convinced that today will be the day they are chosen by humans to enter the great beyond, that being the world on the other side of those automatic sliding doors.
Frank (Seth Rogen), an optimistic hot dog with teeth like Seth Rogen's, longs for the moment he can leave his packaging and "fill" his sweetheart, a bun named Brenda (Kristen Wiig). That moment seems to be coming when they are selected and placed in a cart, but things quickly go awry. Frank and Brenda are left behind on the supermarket floor, while their friends go to the Great Beyond, only to find out that things are far from great.
On top of being super profane, Sausage Party is one of the more violent films you will witness at a cinema this summer, with various food things and condiments suffering unthinkable, purely heinous fates (What happens to heads of lettuce and baby carrots is particularly nightmarish). Rogen and Goldberg have found themselves a little loophole, that being main characters that aren't human or animal, that allows for non-stop carnage within the confines of an R-rating.
That loophole also allows for a food orgy that would be too much for your average porno, yet, there it is, a bunch of characters openly fornicating in just about every way possible on a big screen playing next door to Finding Dory.
If you're a parent out there who doesn't watch commercials and takes kids to the movies based on the poster, you are in for the shock of your life. However, the first word in this movie is actually "shit" so you should know early on that the wrong entertainment has been chosen for the day. Unless, of course, you and your kids are truly twisted, in which case, have at it.
Other exquisite touches include a main villain that is a total douche. And by total douche, I really mean he's a douche voiced by Nick Kroll. He's also a leaky douche, so his thing is to suck the replenishing juices out of his prey, sometimes in a way that is most provocative.
James Franco is on hand as the voice of a druggie experimenting with bath salts, while Edward Norton voices Sammy Bagel, Jr., a bagel who plays a pivotal, perverted part in that food orgy. Rogen and Goldberg mainstays like Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, David Kurmholtz and Danny McBride all have roles, and they all contribute to make this the most outrageously insane Hollywood comedy since, well, their very own, brilliant This is the End (2013).
What makes Sausage Party a cut above your average stoner movie full of food items screwing and being murdered is that it is actually a smart swipe at organized religion and politics. I don't want to give much away other than to say this movie makes you think a lot more than you would expect from a movie that features a taco going down on a hotdog bun.
I heard Rogen on The Howard Stern Show saying he thinks Sausage Party could be a franchise ripe for sequels. Just how the hell he thinks he can top the madness of this movie is beyond comprehension, but I will certainly be in line to find out when he tries.
