Review: Sausage Party (2016)

     Story:
     Sausage Party follows the story of a weiner named Frank (Seth Rogen) who, along with his fellow food items at the grocery store, is convinced he will be picked up from his store aisle and be taken to "The Great Beyond." However, as the film progresses, he slowly has realizations about what "The Great Beyond" really means as well as the truth of his own existence.

    Ups:
    While the film definitely lives up to being the raunchy comedy that it is being sold as, there is a lot more going on than what is on the surface. This film is interestingly a satirical demonstration on theology, sexual repression, and even racial relations. The characters talk a lot about being chosen by "the gods" who are actually grocery store customers yet it serves as a successful metaphor for being chosen by the actual gods to go to Heaven or the different representations of Heaven that several religions believe in.

    The themes of sexual repression lie particularly in the relationship between Frank and a female hot dog bun played by Kristen Wiig. At first, they are sitting on the same shelf, packaged up in different bags and they talk about having relations yet the only way they would make contact is by their fingertips. Also, Salma Hayek voices a lesbian taco named Teresa that keeps making moves on Brenda yet because they believe they are under the watchful eyes of "the gods," Teresa never acts on those feelings.

    At first, I found a lot of the characters to be rather stereotypical: Salma Hayek's taco character, A Jewish bagel voiced by Edward Norton, an Arabic flatbread voiced by David Krumholtz, a pack of grits voiced by Craig Robinson, and a Native American liquor voiced by Bill Hader. But then I realized because the film depicts racial relations, these stereotypes play into the film's intricate themes and satirical elements.

    I also thought the voice work from the cast was pretty spectacular. Seth Rogen and Kristen Wiig were as funny as they always are. But a few standouts, in my opinion, were Edward Norton who did his best Woody Allen as Sammy Bagel, Jr., Salma Hayek as the lesbian taco Teresa, and Nick Kroll who played a villainous douche called Douche.

    Downs:
    While this is something that I am used to when watching a film with Seth Rogen and his crew, I thought that there were WAY too many uses of the F-word. I get that they were trying to push the envelope for an animated film. But they just used it one too many times. Because of its foul language and brand of raunchy humor, I would highly recommend that parents do not, and I mean, do NOT bring their children into this. It is very R-rated.

    Also, the film is about 89 minutes, yet towards the end, it felt a lot longer than that.

    Consensus:
    Overall, Sausage Party offers off plenty of thought provoking ingredients to create a recipe for a flavorful comedic farce.

Grade: B+