This review originally ran as part of our Comic-Con 2016 coverage
PLOT: Various members of the supermarket food community, previously under the assumption that they go to paradise after they're chosen to leave the store, discover that what human "gods" have planned for them is certain doom. One sausage and one hot dog bun set out into the wilds of the market to uncover more on this startling revelation.
REVIEW: There are moments in SAUSAGE PARTY that I don't think I could describe even if I wanted to. We're talking out there stuff, scenes that I think will become instant classics, if not now then on Blu-ray. "Holy crap, did you see SAUSAGE PARTY?!" will certainly become a popular refrain at the end of the summer.
The brainchild of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (who co-wrote alongside Ariel Shaffir and Kyle Hunter), SAUSAGE PARTY is a completely irreverent animated comedy the likes of which I don't believe we've seen before. The closest comparison is certainly South Park, and TEAM AMERICA comes to mind too. It's unbelievably crass, foul-mouthed and outrageous, yet intelligent and ceaselessly amusing as well. And geniunely laugh-out-loud funny. It milks laughs out of lowbrow jokes and subtle ones alike, and some of those big scenes I mentioned earlier brought the house down at the Comic-Con screening I attended. I haven't laughed this hard in a good long while.
The hook here is that all food is alive, walking, talking, singing, dancing the days away in supermarkets while waiting to be "chosen" by the gods for an adventure to the great beyond (basically whatever's waiting for them outside the market). They've all been led to believe that it's paradise out there, and Frank (Rogen), a cocky beef sausage, is hoping to travel there with his girlfriend Brenda (Kristen Wiig), a comely hot dog roll. As they look forward to "Red, White and Blue" day, of course one of the more popular days for food, Frank and Brenda eagerly plan the moment he'll be able to slip inside her. But he and the other dogs in his pack are stunned when they hear a warning from a traumatized jar of honey mustard (Danny McBride), recently returned from the outside world, that the gods don't exactly have food's best interests in mind when they take them to the great beyond.
SAUSAGE PARTY quickly escalates into a crazy series of set pieces, where Frank and Brenda have to find out the truth behind their existence, while Frank's best friend Barry (Michael Cera) has to survive the outside world after nearly becoming dinner. Other characters include a clearly Palestinian pita (David Krumholtz) and a clearly Jewish bagel (Edward Norton) who bicker constantly (yes, the movie examines, and solves, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), a wise bottle of whiskey that surely resembles a Native American (Bill Hader) and a Stephen Hawking-esque piece of gum. I don't even want to reveal what Nick Kroll plays.
It's such a hard movie to talk about because the pleasures lay in the surprises, and I'm not about to give anything else away. The film has been inventively directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon; it's colorful, filled with interesting details and genuinely good-looking. The action scenes are exciting, just as the horror scenes are vividly freaky (lots of savage food dismemberment here). As can be expected, the humor is well-timed and sharp, with groan-worthy puns existing comfortably alongside more thought-provoking material. And, sure, there are plenty of sex/poop/fluid jokes, most of which win you over despite their crudeness.
SAUSAGE PARTY probably won't get an amazing amount of love from the critics, nor will it be nominated for Best Animated Feature (at least, I'm pretty sure it won't). You have to hand it to Rogen and Goldberg, who've apparently spent over seven years trying to get this thing off the ground. I'll leave it to you to decide if the effort was worth it considering just how damn trivial the film is, but I know I was always happy they went through with it because of just how damn entertaining it is.