Sausage Party is a trifle undercooked
You know those hilarious conversations when you’re shooting the shit with your friends, high or drunk or whatever? Now, imagine someone made an animated movie based on them. Welcome to “Sausage Party”.
In a world where food has consciousness, all they ever want is to be chosen and taken to ‘the great beyond’. But when one sausage begins to suspect there’s more to life, he sets of on a quest to find the truth.
Don’t let the cutesy animation and jolly premise fool you for a second, this is a seriously adult cartoon, profane in every sense of the word from the second it begins. It’s peppy opening number (with music by the legendary Alan Menken no less) provides amusement but it immediately draws comparison with “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut” and its not a comparison that flatters. The one thing “Sausage Party” does is prove just how tricky it is to replicate what Matt Stone and Trey Parker have done for nearly two decades worth of “South Park”.
The story, by long-time writing partners Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Jonah Hill, leaves no food-as-genitals joke unexplored, stretching the premise way beyond its breaking point. Luckily, its frenetic and foul-mouthed enough that it distracts from its own inconsistencies as it goes. Food is definitely alive, but so apparently are some other groceries, such as toilet paper and, notably, a douche yet there’s no clear line where ‘life’ ends and inanimate objects begin. There are some undeniably great moments but as a whole, it doesn’t quite hang together, feeling more like a collection of themed sketches, some of which are more successful than others.
The voice cast is pretty good, with Kirsten Wiig, Bill Hader and – astonishingly – Edward Norton turning in MVP performances alongside the ever likeable Seth Rogen as Frank, the heroic sausage.
Some individual great moments but as a whole it doesn’t quite hang together. Its overarching theme of faith and religion provides little food for thought and despite its hilariously tasteless no-holds-barred finale, it fails to linger long on the palate.
