Note: The following is based on a work-in-progress version of Sausage Party. The final version won't arrive in theaters until this August.
I know it may be a tad hyperbolic to pull out an "ever made" months before a film even hits theaters, but Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's Sausage Party really is the craziest animated movie ever made in terms of a release from a major studio meant for 3,500 screens -- or at least the craziest, filthiest, most deranged animated movie I've ever seen. It's like theDeadpool of animated movies, and in a riskier year where a film like Deadpool changes the game when it comes to R-rated superhero movies, Sausage Party -- depending on how it's received by audiences -- may also change the game when it comes to R-rated animated fare.
Not since 1999's South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut has there been an R-rated animated movie as disgustingly amusing as Sausage Party, which quite literally rips pages out of Pixar's notebook, as well as the recent Lego Movie, while offering up a story that forever changes the way you will look at all the food in your local
Seth Rogen and Kristen Wiig voice a sausage and bun, respectively, who've always longed to be with one another once the gods (aka people) come and take them away to the promised land. Or so they think. Much like the set-up for The Lego Movie (Sausage Partyeven has its own version of "Everything Is Awesome"), our main characters think that everything will be awesome once they're "chosen" to leave the supermarket, or so they've been told by a wise group of non perishable food who'd rather not cause mass hysteria by admitting the truth.
So naturally things become a bit complicated when our heroic sausage learns that life ain't so peachy on the other side, and that humans actually want to destroy them. Thus an adventure ensues -- first with sausage and bun looking to reunite with their packaging when an accident leaves them stranded in another aisle, and later to convince others of the truth once the harsh realities of their entire purpose in life is revealed.
(And that's without even mentioning the film's maniacal villain, a literal douche, voiced by Nick Kroll, or the countless other characters we meet, most notably a Woody Allen-inspired bagel voiced by Edward Norton and a Stephen Hawking-inspired piece of gum.)
Along the way there's a brilliant Saving Private Ryan bit, when a horrifying accident leaves a shopping cart full of food fighting for their lives (this Oreo moment above just kills me), not to mention a ton of sexual references, filthy language and basically every offensive racial stereotype you can think of. Oh, Sausage Party will most certainly be divisive and not for everyone (please, mom and dad, do your research before blindly taking your small children to this movie -- you will scar them for life), but what's fun and refreshing about it is that Rogen and Goldberg did the legwork.
This isn't some lazy raunch fest with a bunch of dirty food jokes stuffed in for the sake of it. This is a pretty ingenious deconstruction of a genre that Pixar helped perfect with movies likeToy Story, A Bug's Life and Finding Nemo. It may not be as well-rounded and Oscar worthy as, say, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs or Ratatouille, but Sausage Party is wildly and wickedly inventive, and stacked with an all-star voice cast (Craig Robinson, Edward Norton, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Salma Hayek, Bill Hader, Nick Kroll, Danny McBride) who elevate the material in some incredibly fun ways.
If you dig button-pushing comedy that feels both familiar and completely batsh*t insane at the same time, then there's no way you miss Sausage Party. See it with a group of like-minded buddies, and you won't be disappointed.
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