Film Review: Sausage Party

The hype is real and it’s well-deserved.

The great movie producers have their trademarks in film, even if you don’t even know what that trademark is. Hell, it could be multiple trademarks. Scorcese, Spielberg, Nolan, all the great ones have specific traits where you KNOW it’s a movie with THEIR fingers on it. Point is, after all of these years, I think the combined efforts of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are starting to show the specific traits that are making them a really excellent duo, especially in comedy. Action/horror/drama movies are certainly in the cards for the duo, but they’ve perfected their brand of comedy that yes, is one part stoner, but is also based in a good amount of heart that helps these films hold up. Movies like 50/50 and This Is The End and more of the later films age just fine and it’s because Seth and Evan have found the thing that makes their jokes about weed or whatever stand out separately from the stoner classics of the past. Gone are the days where stoner jokes about Cheetos or unemployable characters were the punch lines. Seth and Evan have changed the paradigm and that continues with the animated comedy Sausage Party.

This continues in Sausage Party. When I first came away from watching it, I was slightly disappointed in that it wasn’t raunchier, but when I sat down to think about it, this is what Seth and Evan like to do now. Sausage Party, in body and in mind, is Toy Story for adults. Yes, I had to get over some plot holes to finally get there (for example, there’s not a grocery store in the world that keeps sausages/hot dogs NOT in the refrigerated section), but overall I was absolutely satisfied with the end result.

And how could I not be? As a matter of fact, one of the things that most TV voice actors hate about the big animated movies is that for the most part the casts are comprised of already-famous actors with no voice talent. THOSE same critics, would love Sausage Party. Guys like Bill Hader, Kroll, Krumholtz, Norton, and even Franco didn’t just use their fame as part of a role, they WERE their parts (double kudos to Norton who was fabulous).

Just like the great animated comedies of television, there were a lot of questions raised with Sausage Party that I quite wasn’t expecting in a movie featuring a talking jizz-filled condom. Questions about religion, racial bias, ethnic backgrounds were sewn in the fabric of Sausage Party, and even if you aren’t a fan of the answers that are presented, you certainly come away thinking, ‘They might have a point’. All this on a production budget that should have fans of Pixar/Dreamworks animated movies come away thinking “HOW much did that cost?”

The really good animated comedy TV shows of our time are disruptive in nature. The Simpsons, South Park, and maybe one or two others shifted the notion of what a cartoon is all about. Rogen and Goldberg do the same thing in a different medium, and as such. we could see the start of a gold rush that should get you excited about the future of adult animation.

SCORE
9/10