REVIEW: Sausage Party (2016)

The following is a quick review of Sausage Party – Directed by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan

It might not have been one of the ten films I was most excited for in 2016, but Sausage Party’s trailers really started to get me fired up about the film. I think the red band trailers were solid, and I was definitely getting more and more excited about the film. I didn’t get to see it in theaters, though, and I had to wait this long to finally see Seth Rogen’s animated project. Frankly, it’s a pretty disappointing film, even if it isn’t all that bad.

In Sausage Party, grocery items dream of being selected by humans to go to a heavenly place they call ‘the great beyond.’ Two grocery items are particularly excited. Frank (voiced by Seth Rogen) – a sausage – and Brenda (voiced by Kristen Wiig) – a hotdog bun – want to be together in the great beyond, but a suicidal honey mustard jar (voiced by Danny McBride) ends their journey before they got out of the supermarket. Now Frank and Brenda must decide whether to go ‘home’ or to find out why the jar wanted to end its life.

The basic premise of the film is that food items find out what happens to them when we bring them with us from a supermarket. It’s a really cool idea, and that premise is really the best thing this film has going for it. But there isn’t much else to really praise. Sure, the filmmakers really went far and beyond to talk about existential crisis and religion, but I don’t think it works well in the film.

The animation is solid and there are some fun characters – the gum (voiced by Scott Underwood) is my personal favorite – but I got weary of being beaten over the head with sexual innuendos, racial and religious stereotypes, and raunchy jokes. It is too ‘on-the-nose.’ It is too over the top, and the central joke is overdone.

It isn’t unfunny, but the interesting premise is wasted on unsubtle sex jokes. The film feels much longer than it is, some of the jokes are really lazy, and the laugh-out-loud moments are few and far between. Seeing as I’m a big fan of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s work, I was really excited for the film, but it didn’t live up to its potential. Sausage Party is just okay.

6 out of 10

– Jeffrey Rex