‘Sausage Party’ pushes boundaries, satirizes genre conventions

Sausage Party is a film that may not have been on your radar, and if so, correct that immediately. Despite what the image above would have you believe, this is no children’s film. Sausage Party is pure, adult animated fun that pushes the boundaries of it’s hard R-rating and and satirizes normal animated film conventions. In many ways, this is 2016’s “The Lego Movie”.

The story begins at “Shopwell’s”, a grocery store consisting of anthropomorphic foods chatting amongst themselves, hoping to please “the gods” (humans) in order for them to be taken into “The Great Beyond” (the home of the humans). Until one day, a sausage named Frank discovers the horrifying truth, these gods plan to EAT them. The panic rises amongst them, until everything ends with a climactic showdown in one of the funniest endings I’ve seen in any film. This story cleverly satirizes that of Pixar, something only further parodied with an opening musical number and it’s simplistic animation. But, right from the start it’s a crude beast, unleashing rounds of sexual innuendos and profanity. This gimmick tends to get old pretty quickly, and unfortunately that’s one of the films biggest flaws. There’s only so many times you can allude sausages and buns to sex, but scattered around are some laugh-out-loud moments and bursts of clever wittiness. There are jokes poking fun at racial stereotypes, homosexuality and even some current world topics, all done in a very tasteful manner (no pun intended). It’s a cycle of stretching jokes until they’re way too thin, until it surprises you with a clever gag you didn’t see coming. And when Sausage Party works, it REALLY works.

rank, a sausage (Seth Rogen), and Brenda, a bun (Kristen Wiig), stare at each other longingly, hoping a customer will purchase them so that they can be together forever.

Despite how many films it tends to reference and poke fun at, it’s definitely one of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s more ambitious and focused efforts. This duo is known for bringing us several hit comedies such as “Superbad”, “The Interview” and both “Neighbors” films. While there’s are countless moments of missed opportunities, it’s nice to finally receive a film with some structure to it’s narrative as opposed to just scenes of improv strung together. Not to mention the fact that it’s only a breezy 90 minutes long, so it never overstays it’s welcome.

Sausage Party is both a clever and completely juvenile adventure that will no doubt cause a massive controversy from parents mistakingly taking their children to see it. It’s witty satire combined with raunchy fun all wrapped up in a CGI-animated bow. Even those slightly intrigued should check it out if only due to sheer curiosity. This is what I call a satisfying finish to the summer-movie-season.

jordan Figueredo

Cigar City Magazine Staff Writer and Movie Critic