Film review: ‘Sausage Party’

If you're wondering how the filmmakers of 'Sausage Party' understand their place in the constellation of animated films, note the bumper sticker seen fleetingly on one car: Dixar.

Turning Pixar into a phallus joke is representative of the film's overall abhorrence of subtlety.

It took writers Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir and Seth Rogen eight years to grind out this picture and one feels the marijuana required to complete the script would be measured in pounds—it takes many hours to accumulate that critical mass of strained puns about genitalia.

Rogen also plays the hero, Frank, a regular-sized sausage who is in a committed relationship with the girl next door, or rather the hot dog bun on the next shelf over, Brenda (Kristen Wiig). The couple believes in 'bunogamy,' and are saving themselves in bulging plastic bags.

Their life plan is to leave the Shopwell's grocery together and reach the Great Beyond, an all-inclusive paradise they're assured is just beyond the automatic doors to the parking lot. All is well until Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) is returned from his alleged rapture and recounts to his friends the genocide of comestibles in the outside world.

Frank and Brenda make a chaotic escape from a customer's cart and, in a race for enlightenment before reaching their expiration date, travel the wide world in other aisles of the store. They meet two on-the-nose breads: Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton, whose hidden talent is doing a spot-on Woody Allen parody) and Kareen Abdul Lavash (David Krumholtz). The bagel insists his brethren aren't colonizing the ethnic foods aisle but the lavash is enraged by the encroachment and must calm himself by imagining the 77 bottles of extra virgin olive oil he will be provided in the Great Beyond.

There's also Salma Hayek's Teresa del Taco, a crunchy, corny lesbian with an abiding interest in broadening Brenda's horizons. But the juiciest part is Nick Kroll's—in a nice callback to his classic role as radio personality 'The Douche' on the TV series 'Parks and Recreation,' he plays an actual douche who rages after his nozzle gets bent.

Frank finally gets the answers he wants from Firewater (Bill Hader), a liquor bottle who counts as a wise old man because he's a non-perishable. It turns out Firewater and the other immortal foods (e.g. the Twinkie) decided to feed the ignorant perishables the easy lie of heaven rather than the reality of death at the end….This might just be an understated critique of organized religion.

Given the amount of dope characters consume (through, charmingly, a kazoo) it's pretty clear where the filmmakers stand on the best way to enjoy the film. There is an unceasing delight in the obvious, as when Frank tells the corn on the cob, 'Lend me your ears.' All the fruits are homosexual (they love participating in choir) and there is a führer-inspired line of sauerkraut dedicated to exterminating the juices.

Things end less in triumph than in raunchiness—not, however, NC-17 raunchy because the naughty bits of an anthropomorphic lavash were digitally snipped. Much like Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut,' a last-second digital manipulation has allowed a mass audience to embrace their prurience under the aegis of high/low art.

Watch a trailer from the film below:

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'Sausage Party' is showing at the Sonoma 9 Cinemas. Rated R. Running time 1:28. Visit cinemawest.com.