Film Review- Sausage Party

It's not uncommon nowadays for trailers to show the best parts of their movie. After all, in an age where less and less people are going to the cinema, studios will do whatever it takes to get people to purchase a ticket to their product. In recent times however, this has created major issues, whether it be that the trailers have spoiled what could have been a truly surprising reveal (eg Spider-Man in Civil War or Wolverine in X-Men: Apocalypse) or have given away their big marquee moments (see the Independence Day: Resurgence trailer as a prime example of this). Yet the most concerning aspect of this trend is that we are now getting trailers that are actually better than the film's for which they are advertising. The Suicide Squad trailers captured the world's imagination, but received lukewarm responses from critics upon release. Warcraft promised to be the fantasy event of this generation, but what we got instead was a steaming pile of excrement which no-one in their right mind should ever consider watching. Which brings me to Sausage Party which, while not a bad movie per se, was no-where near as entertaining as the trailer would have had you believe. 

Written by and starring Seth Rogen alongside Kristen Wigg, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Edward Norton, Michael Cera, Salma Hayek and James Franco, the film is about several supermarket items whose lives revolve around getting to "The Great Beyond", or in simpler terms being purchased. However, over the course of the movie Frank the Sausage (Rogen) begins to discover what getting to The Great Beyond actually entails and thus begins his quest to convince the other food supplies of the truth and to stand up against the humans who consume them. 

The concept of the film is fantastic, but it might have been better as a 15-20 minute short. It struggles to find enough story to justify its 88 minute run-time and there are moments around the middle wherein nothing seems to happen. On top of this, there becomes a point where food related puns and innuendos stop being funny and start becoming grating and for me personally this transition happens quite early on into the movie. This is my major criticism of Sausage Party, but it also did have several other minor issues on top of this. Many of the characters play off of racial or social stereotypes which will either come across as offensive to some or lazy to others (for me it was the latter). It wasn't even as if the filmmakers tried to subvert any expectations in this regard: the tequila was Mexican and untrustworthy, the Firewater was Native-American and mystical etc. This might have worked in the nineties but humour has evolved since then, and Rogen and company should have been aware that they would have had to work harder than this to help this concept reach its full potential. Finally, the main antagonist of Sausage Party (humans aside) is a douche named Douche, who is seeking revenge against Frank for breaking his nozzle, thereby thwarting any hope he had of reaching The Great Beyond. Douche is a completely pointless character and one of the worst villains I've seen in cinema this year. He's just pointless, there is no need for him to be there and he serves as a secondary antagonist anyway as the humans are meant to be the true enemy of the story. A clear indication of the writers trying desperately to fill out the plot, Douche as a character personifies all the problems with Sausage Party as a whole.  

There is a lot of good things about this film though. The animation was great, and I loved the idea of parodying Pixar, which they actually did really well. The story more or less followed the "Pixar formula", and this actually helped the humour as we could view the film through the lens of it's juxtaposition to the traditional family friendly animated product. "The Great Beyond Song" was also very funny and got the film off to an extremely pleasant start. The voice-acting was also very much on-point, particularly from Norton and David Krumholtz, a bagel and a lavash who parodied the conflict between Israel and Palestine in the Middle-East. While some of their material fell into the aforementioned pit-fall of stereotypical writing, these two managed to elevate the material they were given and stole the show anytime they were on screen. Finally I would like to give this film some goodwill and credit. It's been rare this summer to get a truly original concept on-screen and, while the execution wasn't as finessed as one would have hoped, the idea was great and the film did have some strong standouts moments. Despite being given away in the trailer, the moment the food realise their horrible fate still cracked me up in the screening, and the giant food orgy at the film's end was both one of the most amusing and worst things I've seen all year. 

Overall, Sausage Party was a bit of a disappointment but it wasn't a bad film (which seems to be a recurring theme of this year). I'd compare it to Deadpool in a sense due to the fact that it was a movie that took chances but just didn't push the envelope enough for me personally. Some of the humour was lazy and a bit outdated, but by the same token it was a fresh and original concept which is always good to see on-screen. It wasn't amazing, it wasn't terrible, in the end Sausage Party was a very middle of the road movie in what has been a very middle of the road year at the cinema. I can only hope that as we near the awards season we start to see films coming out that will blow audiences away (my money's on Damien Chizelle's La La Land to pull off this feet by the way.)

Score: 6.6/10