Since the trailer for “Sausage Party” dropped in March, the internet has been a tug of war over whether the movie would be good or bad. Because of its ridiculous premise and even dumber name, I assumed the latter. Yet when the movie released on August 12th, I was shocked to see critics and Facebook friends alike call it one of the funniest movies of the year. In its opening weekend it made nearly double its budget at the box office, and is still growing. So with that in mind I swallowed my pride and decided to see it with a few friends. After it was over however, I realized I should have trusted my gut instinct when I saw the trailer.
The movie had its funny moments, but as a whole 90 minute movie it just didn't work for me. At first I assumed that it would be a parody of a Pixar style movie, playing on the tropes and stereotypes of popular animated children's movies. But after the opening scene, it quickly devolved into a boring, predictable plot filled with uninspired jokes. All of the jokes in this movie can be broken down into three categories: food puns, sexual innuendos (it is called “Sausage Party” after all), and food saying bad words.
The last of the three is what annoys me the most. I don't have a problem with vulgarity, but curse words aren't jokes. It confused me when a character would give some basic expository dialogue with the “F word” sprinkled throughout and it got a chorus of laughter from the audience. Why is that so funny? After 20 minutes the humor of food cursing for no reason wore off. If the same line was delivered with live actors there wouldn't be any kind of response.
The other problem I had was the heavy handed religious metaphors. I’ve read other critics praise this movie because of its farce of religion, but I felt that it wasn't executed in the right way. The movie establishes that food see humans as Gods, and they think that when they leave the grocery store they are headed to paradise. When the obvious reality sets in, much of the food is hesitant to believe the truth. I wouldn't have a problem with this if it wasn't for the parallels to real world religion. There are certain characters that are supposed to represent real world religions, like Christianity, Islam and Judaism. By the end of the movie if you strip away the cartoon food, it boils down to an atheist showing them the error of their ways, and that all their previous beliefs and practices don't matter. I'm not a religious person, but the arrogance and ego of that ending stuck with me. It wouldn't offend most people, but instead alienate those who are religious.
It should be no surprise to anyone who sees a movie entitled “Sausage Party” that there would be a lot of jokes about sex and sexual innuendos. What I didn't expect, however, was the amount of jokes and scenes involving sexual assault. I come from the school of thought that you can make a joke out of anything, no matter how horrible, as long as it's done tastefully or with respect to the people affected by that horrible thing. In this case, it was done to shock the audience and make them uncomfortable, and I didn't see the humor in it at all. It was a cheap shot at touchy subject for many people, and I didn't appreciate it. Other than that, many of the sexual innuendos and jokes are hilarious, with one exception:
(SPOILER ALERT! I'M DISCUSSING THE FINAL SCENE OF THE MOVIE!)
This is where the movie really jumps the shark. The final scene in the movie is a massive, grocery store wide orgy. This is supposed to be the climax (pun intended) of the movie with all the food celebrating their defeat of their human overlords. All different types of food are having sex in very graphic and over the top ways. I honestly didn't find this funny at all, in fact I found it boring. It reminded me of something I would find while browsing Newgrounds.com in middleschool. It felt unnecessarily long and drawn out, with very little actual visual jokes and just visuals of food having sex.
With all that being said, I did find myself laughing quite a bit. And with nearly $80 million two weeks after release, a lot of other people thought so as well. But that's really not as surprising as you think when you look at who was behind it. This movie was going to print money as soon as the trailer came out, and for good reason. It has a solid cast of comedic actors including Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Nick Kroll, Salma Hayek, and Jonah Hill, and written mainly by Rogen and Evan Goldberg who wrote many of Rogen’s other successful comedies. It also had an aggressive viral marketing campaign, with ads like this showing up on every social media site.
A lot of people, myself included, were curious to see if an original R-Rated cartoon would work. Other adult cartoon movies like “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut” or “Beavis and Butthead Do America” already had established fanbases and brand recognition.
Due to the success of this movie, I am excited to see the rise of other R-Rated cartoons in the future. This movie showed Hollywood that these types of movies are profitable, and in the end that's all that matters to the people with the money. I could totally see how someone would like this movie, but it wasn't for me. I expected more from the creators and ended up being disappointed. My only hope is that someone takes the foundation that this movie established and does something truly hilarious and unique.
