At Shopwell’s, food is alive. Not with teeming bacteria and molds, but with voices and personalities. Sausage Party, it’s like Foodfight! with substantially better animation, actual comedy, and adult themes. Well, actually, Foodfight! has plenty of adult themes, but I digress.

The premise of Sausage Party is certainly novel. A re-enactment of the Omaha Beach scene from Saving Private Ryan done with animated food products is nothing I thought I would see on film. It’s pretty awesome.

The film is littered with big name comedy voices. Nick Kroll essentially plays his Bobby Bottleservice character (which is great). Kristen Wiig plays a chaste hot dog bun, which is rather one-note. Edward Norton does a pretty good Woody Allen impression as a bagel. And Seth Rogen, as per usual, basically plays himself; only, of course, he is a sausage. The voice acting across the board is all good, although picking out the obvious actors behind the voices can easily take you out of the experience.

Underneath the lazy laugh lines that are punctuated by unrestrained expletives are superficial social commentaries on ethnicity, religion, and geopolitics that are usually effective and jokes relying on the dramatic irony that stems from the ignorance of sentient food. The obviousness of the religious overtones are used to good effect throughout the film, and the novelty of the world and its bad food-related wordplay doesn’t get old through the short 90 minute runtime.

On the whole, Sausage Party is a strong comedic endeavor, although it is clunky with some of its delivery. It is an inventive crude comedy, even if it is rough around the edges both comically and narratively, as it makes up for these flaws with perhaps the most unique religious morality tale out there. For the right audience, Sausage Party is just crass enough to be low-brow enjoyable and just smart enough to be compelling.

 

The Post-Script

I’m a guy who’s fine with raunchy subject matter. I’m the kind of guy who enjoys it when it’s done well. This said, the amount of offensiveness for offensiveness sake in this movie gets old, in my opinion. It isn’t the best place in the film’s world to draw comedy from, but it is the place that the film falls back on again and again. There are a lot of moments in this film to enjoy, but the reliance on raunchy humor in this film kind of turned me off to it. It felt imbalanced. In short, if you are the easily offended type, steer clear of this movie.

 

As always, thanks for reading!

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—Alex Brannan (@TheAlexBrannan)