Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have built quite a resume together. You know them as the brain trust behind stuff like “Pineapple Express”, “Superbad”, “This Is The End”, and more recently “Neighbors” and “The Night Before”. These movies are all varying degrees of funny and most of them are pretty good (um, “The Green Hornet” aside). You know their style of comedy by now.
With their latest project they take a dive into slightly new territory though: animation. “Sausage Party” has them teaming up with recurring collaborators like Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Danny McBride for the tried and true formula, and newcomers to the team such as Kristen Wiig, Selma Hayek and Edward Norton are welcome additions.
Norton voicing a Jewish bagel I found to be particularly interesting, especially the scenes focusing on his interactions with another certain food who serves as a sort of cultural rival. There is a Native-American bottle of liquor who smokes an ample amount of herb and is a kind of elderly statesman, voiced by the fantastic Bill Hader. Nick Kroll is a super-bro toiletry that is a call-back to a character in his short-lived but hilarious “Kroll Show”, so if you are a fan of his or the show this should be a welcome surprise.
At one point the film even takes us into a bar full of Mexican salsas and a tequila bottle of questionable character. Oh, and the aforementioned Hayek plays a crispy taco, of course. Does that sound exciting? It all sounds ridiculous I know, and it is, but if you’ve seen any kind of promotion for this movie none of this should come as a surprise.
The film is as crude and raunchy as the trailers and R-rating would have you believe, but it works for the most part because the script has more to say than its smokescreen of irreverent jokes. Once you get over the initial juvenile shock-laughs that are provided by watching food items drop f-bomb after f-bomb and the sexually explicit insinuations, there is a pretty thoughtful and clever movie in front of you.
That’s right: Rogen & Co. managed to make a cartoon that mostly succeeds in conversing insightfully on topics like belief systems and that explores the nature and senselessness of racial and cultural tensions. The achievement of this film is that it manages to incorporate these weighty topics seamlessly into the story and without seeming forced or heavy-handed, and most importantly, while still being funny. It is a comedy after all.
It seems weird to say that the most socially relevant studio film of 2016 up to this point is a potty-mouthed animated comedy starring a beef frank, a hot dog bun and other groceries, but that just might be the case. Which isn’t to say it’s necessarily one of the best films of the year. It isn’t. My top three so far are still “Green Room,” “Hail Caesar!”, and “The Nice Guys” by a considerable margin (I am very eagerly anticipating “Hell Or High Water”).
That said, “Sausage Party” is a film of surprising quality and easily one of the better releases of the summer. It will make you laugh and then it will make you think. So yeah, two thumbs up. Go check it out if you haven’t already. Maybe don’t take kids under 13, though.
