The fact that this movie is a cartoon about a talking sausage trying to discover his place in the universe isn’t what turned me away from it. I love clever comedies that tackle controversial material and that aren’t afraid to offend certain audiences. The problem with Sausage Party however is that its themes are so obvious and in your face that the humor and story elements get quickly lost along the way.
Instead of a religious satire, the movie comes across as a secular sermon, using its bizarre plot and ridiculous characters as a means of preaching a vehemently anti-religious message. And with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg cramming as much sex-related and stoner humor as they possibly can into a 90 minute movie, it becomes clear that every joke is told within the first five minutes and then repeated over and over.
Plot wise it’s pretty simple. Most of the story takes place inside a supermarket, where the food products wait to be selected by the humans, whom they view as deities and refer to the outside world as the “great beyond.” However, when a sausage named Frank (Rogen) hears from another member of the pack that everything they’ve been told is a lie and that the gods they worship eat them, he becomes perturbed and goes searching for the truth.
Now, there’s a lot to admire here from a conceptual standpoint, and there’s no doubt that Rogen and company put a lot of thought into this project. It’s also clear that he and fellow cast members Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and several others had fun making this one. But when the dialogue blatantly states multiple times that the filmmakers are opposed to organized religion for its imposing on human sexuality, it becomes impossible to care about these characters when their only purpose is to help present an oversimplified sociopolitical message.
Case in point, there is a lesbian taco in the film voiced by Salma Hayek, who’s so one-dimensional that all she talks about is her desire to be with Wiig’s character Brenda, a hot dog bun made to look like a vagina. However, the law they submit to requires that they not act upon these urges and instead remain fresh inside their packages, so that they’re presentable to the gods. This theme isn’t just expressed in instances such as this, it’s hammered into the viewer’s mind from beginning to end.
The script was written by Rogen, Goldberg, Kyle Hunter, and Ariel Shaffir, with Jonah Hill receiving partial story credit. And judging by the buzz this movie is getting online, many audiences and critics seem to think it’s on par with something like Blazing Saddles. To that I’m reminded of a quote by Mel Brooks himself: “When I’m writing a script, I don’t worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters – what they need, what they want, what they should do. That’s what gets the story going. You can’t just have action, you’ve got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.”
Sausage Party left me feeling indifferent toward its characters and everything going on within the story. Once I realized that both the screenwriters and directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon were using the film as an opportunity to preach secularism and see how many sex jokes they could tell, I became disengaged. I get that comedy is subjective and I’ve enjoyed a number of Rogen and Goldberg’s other films, particularly The Interview. But whereas the filmmaking duo has succeeded in the past at making satire that entertains and provokes, with Sausage Party they shove the movie’s thematic material down the viewer’s throat, leaving little room for just pure enjoyment.
2 out of 5 Stars
