Sausage Party not for the weak
Excluding “Deadpool” in February and “Finding Dory” in June, I have struggled to find a movie I really liked this year – and I work at a movie theater – so I see a lot of them. I was about to give up on my hope for another great 2016 film until I went with a friend to see the funniest, dirtiest, wtf movie I have ever seen: “Sausage Party.”
“Sausage Party” is not your typical R-rated film with a few sexual references, explicit language and some nudity. This movie has full on food porn. No, I don’t mean those addicting Instagram accounts showing you endless pictures of burgers and tacos and cupcakes. No. This movie has literal food porn. Animated hot dogs having intercourse with hotdog buns, orgies with bagels and tacos and sausages. That kind of food porn.
For someone like me who enjoys that kind of humor and laughs at sexually frustrated wieners and evil douches, it is the perfect movie, but if you don’t like bad language or sexual references it might not be the film for you. I am comfortable talking about topics that others might not talk publicly about, but even for me, this movie had many moments where I just had to stop and ask myself if this was really happening.
The trailer shows it to be a movie about food finding out what happens when they get chosen and taken to the great beyond, but most of the action happens within the supermarket. As different foods with different views work together to find their way home, they learn the truth about their fate and devise a plan to defeat the humans.
Beyond the funny aspects, there are also some more serious messages. “Sausage Party” has strong themes of love, loyalty, teamwork and also questioning everything you’ve been taught. When their belief that being chosen is a good thing is challenged, some characters accept it faster than others. One scene shows Frank, a sausage, talking with Brenda Bunson, a hotdog bun, asking her how she can believe something so blindly with no proof. There is solid evidence that she is wrong, but she is still holding on to her outdated belief. This could be a dig at religion, but also a larger statement on questioning information you are presented and demanding evidence before trusting it as fact.
Another aspect that adds to the hilarity of the movie is the cultural and political references. The Jewish bagel and Middle Eastern lavash fight over their space in the aisle while the German sauerkraut sings about exterminating the “juice.” The movie also involves many same-sex relationships and sexual encounters. I think it tries to normalize talking about all kinds of sex to make it a more comfortable topic to discuss. But I might be looking too far into it considering I’m talking about a movie with living food.
If this review alone has scarred you for life, you might just want to go re-watch “Finding Dory” instead. (And no shame, because I loved that movie.) But if you are intrigued, go see “Sausage Party” and watch it with others, because you’ll need someone to help you figure out what the f— you just watched when you make it to the end.