As a member of a community consisting of a large majority of artists vying for careers in visual entertainment, the cinematic animation industry continues to grow in manners unparalleled to previous generations. Major corporations like Pixar succeed in portraying a sense of fantasy based realism through evolving 3D technologies. There are more opportunities than ever before for successful career integration in much beloved studios. So of course Seth Rogen would enter the scene of a budding generation of professional artists and make a movie comprised entirely of thinly veiled penis jokes. That's humanity in a nutshell.
Bringing new depths to the term food porn, "Sausage Party" shattered the commonly held belief that animated films must be for children since Disney started doing it. I'd rather take a school bus full of third graders to see "Deadpool" followed by nonstop binging "Game of Thrones" before claiming "Sausage Party" has any resonance with children based on its media construction. Its humor is rooted in primarily shock value married to offensive tropes, graphic violence, drugs, and porn, while taking multiple jabs at organized religion. A disappointment given its intriguing trailer, which broke into major theaters; it had the potential to chance the perception of animation, but settled for nonstop F bombs and animated used condoms. If you're brave enough to sit through the entire feature film, you're in for a rapidly thrown together and in no way satisfying ending; however by the time the ending rolls around, you'll be too busy trying to recover from the intensely graphic content one would usually find in the deepest recesses of the internet.
I've made the joke that they blew all their budget on making its pre-ending scene as, ah, memorable as possible. Thing is though, the most horrific thing about "Sausage Party" lies outside the world of talking sausages and politically charged caricatures. Life for an animator has a dark side. Highly specialized training with minimal opportunities for unionization makes for a toxically competitive industry. Animation studies in the United States are notorious for outsourcing animation to southeast Asian countries, since working standards are lower unfortunately. So with a budget of $19 million, Vancouver based production company Nitrogen Studios had its work cut out for it, especially with a cast of Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Edward Norton and Jonah Hill (and James Franco as a "druggie," because Seth Rogen). But hey, "Akira", a Japanese cyberpunk scifi animated film, was made on a budget roughly barely over "Sausage Party" and it's considered one of the greatest animated films of all time.
On the eve of release, various publications like The Hollywood Reporter got a hold of a letter from 30 Nitrogen animators entailing the nightmare managment forced upon them. The letter detailed threats "used against the team: intimidating staff into working past official studio hours, disciplinary measures utilizing fear tactics that demotivate and cause distress (such as threatening to terminate employment), implying that other departments are working overtime 'voluntarily' as a reason to deny compensation." Multiple artists who chose to walk than be subdued to illegal business practices ended up not being credited at all for their contributions to the production which goes without saying is a disturbing lack of professionalism on behalf of administration of the studio.
As an artist looking to break out into a successful career, this type of unprofessionalism and blatant disregard for the value of an artist's work, time, and skill strikes close to home. Seeing the success of a film like "Sausage Party"-which, despite its disturbing content, lazy writing, and poor attempt at humor, showcased strong artwork and animation-sends a message to studios like Nitrogen and producers like Sony. Its why art is hardly ever taken as a serious career choice, why clients expect work to be delivered to them with the repayment of "exposure" meant to satisfy the artist. If they can continue to get away with maltreatment, what would make them stop?
Nitrogen studios may after all be the funniest joke in the entire movie.
