Be warned - if you hate Seth Rogen and his brand of humor, and are especially repulsed by juvenile humor, excessive swearing, racial stereotypes, sex jokes, and just general button-pushing, then just stay away from Sausage Party. You will find little of worth. All the complaints I've heard about this film have been valid, as they've all come from people who simply thought this film was a reprehensibly stupid idea in the first place. I, for one, was really interested to see where Rogen and the gang would go with this, and I was pleasantly satisfied. But if you find yourself rolling your eyes at 90 minutes of food puns and dick jokes, there's not much I can say to convince you.
To me, though, there's something that sets aside Rogen and co. from the likes of Adam Sandler, who is also known for crass and vulgar humor. But in my view, simply having your comedic brow permanently lowered is not enough to discredit you as a comedy writer - what lacks from Sandler's films is a sense of caring or genuine interest in telling jokes and making films that do or say something. Though they've had both hits and misses, I applaud Rogen and Evan Goldberg for being genuinely intriguing comedic filmmakers that like to push the envelope with premises that are instantly attention-grabbing. Fictionalized versions of them and their friends waiting out the biblical apocalypse, two trash journalists sent to kill a sitting dictator, an animated film about talking food that swears - in my opinion, they're yet to top This is the End in terms of actually delivering on everything their premise entails, but these are ideas that are at least fun and interesting.
Most importantly, the jokes about dicks, race, and violence are not toward nothing. Rogen and his ilk typically engage in vulgarity for vulgarity's sake, and often times that's just about enough, because most of them have the comedic chops to pull it off. But here, there's something to be said for the film's use of over-the-top shock humor. The film primarily satirizes animated Disney films as well as blind faith in religion (yes, really), and its most over-the-top aspects serve both of these comedic aims. It is true that this film contains quite a few more racial stereotypes than past Rogen films (most of his work prefers to take potshots at his fellow Jews), but it's not like Adam Sandler where the humor is meant to derive just from the observation that these people are of a different ethnicity. It's there to make a point. Ultimately, taking from the Trey Parker and Matt Stone book, the film argues for the equal treatment of races, and uses these bizarre stereotypes as just one of its many tools of absurd-ifying every aspect of the satirical world it creates. In other words, the ridiculousness is meant to reflect the ridiculousness of our own world.
And really, this film's satire is the best thing going for it. Having an actual narrative goal to your over-the-top humor is a good cushion, and this film does it well, and it's funny as hell most of the time. For a film with an intriguing but admittedly flimsy and juvenile premise, Rogen and his team wring an impressive amount of genuine laughs. And it's not all relegated to penises and weed - there's some truly legendary food puns and wordplay, clever visual gags, self-referential meta-humor, and some great jabs at popular culture and the human condition in this film that starts off as a quick reversal of expectations for a computer animated film and soon becomes a surprisingly thoughtful meditation on theology, belief, and groupthink, as well as an open celebration of hedonism and gleeful nihilism that backs up an unbelievable amount of profanity and balls-to-the-wall insanity, especially in the third act.
Ultimately, the mass food orgy finale is not quite as much of a cop-out as the Backstreet Boys in heaven (Rogen has a tough time ending his comedies - it's all quite clever, but then he usually just goes for pleasantly silly at the end rather than wrapping his ideas together cleverly), and this is not gleefully offensive and shocking humor of the same satirical genius as South Park, but I'm impressed both with Rogen and his team's desire to incorporate some actual narrative ambition into such a juvenile premise, as well as his unabashed fearlessness as to what to put on a movie screen - though I guess after receiving death threats from North Korea, not much scares you as a filmmaker anymore. As someone who's seen a lot of non-mainstream adult animation filled with cursing and sex toward dramatic purpose rather than for laughs, as well as plenty of anime that can get pretty crazily violent, the novelty of animated things swearing and killing things and fucking each other wore off quickly, and there was a point where I felt like the filmmakers were relishing in their swearing cartoons maybe a little too much. But I know that for the average audience member in this neo-Puritan moviegoing society, this will be the first such foray into animated debauchery, and quite a shocking one at that, so I applaud Rogen and company for their courage on that front.
Overall, as I said before, if juvenile humor and button-pushing toward any purpose don't jibe with you, Sausage Party will not be your bag. It's offensive, profane, disgusting, and stupid - but also pretty clever and often very funny, at least in my opinion, and I have to give Seth Rogen and his crew some bonus points for sheer audacity and their commitment to cinematic anarchy. While this is not satirical shock-humor-with-a-purpose of the highest caliber, it's got some surprising tricks up its sleeve, and should be rewarded for possibly ushering in a new age of mainstream animated American entertainment for adults. If it sounds like something you're open to, check it out. I had a lot of fun.
Grade: B+
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