'Sausage Party": Food Orgy
Contemplating "Sausage Party," an R-rated, animated food orgy in more ways than one, I'm reminded of what a fellow journalist once opined at a block party: "You know what's wrong with you film critics? You see so many movies that when you chance upon something different, you just go crazy."
Thus, I'm proud to report that while the very bawdy, irreverent, sometimes hilarious and ultimately overcooked "Sausage Party" is certainly different, I'm managing to contain myself. While featuring some fine writing and direction from a gaggle of popular, Hollywood humorists, perhaps it's the cartoon venue that inspires some of the deleterious juvenility. In any case, that, and the limitations of just how far one can take an anthropomorphic parody keep the movie from overriding my internal judgment meter. I am no crazier than I was before I saw this film.
But beware, dear reader, whether DAR member in good standing, lefty cosmopolitan, inhibited biddy or free-thinking debaucher who hasn't been right since Al Goldstein's "Screw" (magazine) halted publication, know that "Sausage Party" may cross your line of good taste. Perhaps inspired by, and harking back to Ralph Bakshi's X-rated "Fritz the Cat" (1972), based on Robert Crumb's era-defining comic strip, there is a dual-edged dynamic that promotes its naughtiness. Cartoon characters talking lasciviously is both funny and, well, a bit unseemly.
Now that these warnings both on the label and on the accompanying sheet of precautions have been duly noted, and I'm fairly confident that some poor, unwitting viewer won't be abashed to the point of utter madness by this modern, cinema version of the French postcard, on to the plot. A cast of terrifically voiced groceries live a charmed life at Shopwell's supermarket, flirting, exchanging store gossip and kibitzing with the glib abandon of food with a far off "use by" date. From soup to nuts, their joviality is promoted by the knowledge that The Great Beyond awaits.
In other words, though there's not a milk bottle or a can of beans who could tell you what it's like, they've no doubt that there's an afterlife. But when a jar of honey mustard rejected by its purchaser is returned to the shelves, having thus bitten the forbidden fruit he tells what he's seen. Nothing is ever quite the same at Shopwell's. Doubt pervades. It's just too unthinkable to imagine and recalls Charlton Heston's horror after his discovery in "Soylent Green" (1973).
Of course the mustard's contention must be investigated, and what better searcher of truth in this matter than an all-American hot dog? Excellently verbalized by Seth Rogen, he is appropriately named Frank. Oh, they refer to him as a sausage, but he's doubtless the frankfurter sub-species, and probably a pork-beef blend, skinless, 8-to-a-pound, if I'm interpreting the artist's brushstrokes correctly. But what it doesn't say on the package's required FDA nutrition info is that Frank is an exceptional example of his brand, the wiener version of a Columbus or a Marco Polo.
Note that before the mustard's proclamation, Frank had the American Dream all planned. He had no doubt that he and Brenda (Kristen Wiig), a coquettish bun, were made for each other, and that they would live happily ever after in hot dog heaven. But now it's off on a hero's journey with some of his fellow comestibles. They visit the liquor aisle, where they implore the wisdom of Firewater (Bill Hader), the bottled representation of a Native American and the store's resident oracle.
Meanwhile, Barry (Michael Cera), a fellow hot dog attempting to escape from his suspected fate, finds himself in the outside world, where he winds up in the disheveled digs of Druggie, a Shopwell's employee and junkie voiced by James Franco. There, the slacker injects himself with bath salts, which allows him to see Barry not as a mere, inanimate weenie, but as a fellow being. Of course, the truce ends when the crystals wear off and the dope addict attempts to boil Barry into a dirty water dog.
Up until this point, the risqué humor, a blend of political and sexual satire chock full of metaphors, draws some novel thoughts from the innocent and then shattered beliefs of the various foodstuffs. The filmmakers essentially add a comic book-like addendum to the atheistic adamancy Bill Maher advanced in his "Religulous" (2008). But when the valiant victuals justifiably stage a revolt against the humans who they once believed were gods, frame-cramming rambunctiousness attempts to substitute for creativity and nuance.
The ribald innuendos, initially cutting edge, become adolescently obsessive in the manner of a leering child who, having just learned a new curse word, must repeat it ad nauseam. While it's to be applauded for its ebullient determination to flex its 1st Amendment rights, it becomes obvious that, while it might prove an amuse-bouche for the broadminded, there's just not enough food for thought in "Sausage Party" to make it a main entrée.
"Sausage Party," rated R, is a Columbia Pictures release directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon and stars the voices of Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig and Michael Cera. Running time: 89 minutes
