Seth Rogen and company’s welcome satire of the Pixar formula is an R-rated animated comedy about the secret lives of supermarket foods in which we get to watch a turnip get its dick sucked. I expected a typical Rogen outing (not a bad thing) vaguely masquerading as a big budget kids film, but Sausage Party is almost shockingly akin to the traditional Pixar experience.
All the hallmarks are there: a traditional adventure tale which is really a clever metaphor (Sausage Party uses its outrageous set-up to mock religion, racist clichés, and guys from New Jersey); the characters inhabit an expansive and brilliantly realized universe; and the animation and cast is stellar (on a fraction of the budget, too). Shockingly, the one area where this raunchy comedy falls short is actually the jokes. Whereas Pixar has found that perfect balance of joke-for-the-kid/joke-for-the-parent, Sausage Party aims all of its humor at the one demographic less developed than 5-year-olds: teenagers.
Although Sausage Party is silly, it’s not stupid, and I’m glad this weird fever dream actually exists. Say what you will about the movie landscape in 2016, but I’m not sure there’s another cinematic period in which a film as patently ridiculous as this gets greenlit (never mind being actually good!).
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