An absolute whirlwind of sex jokes, filthy visual gags, and food puns, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Sausage Party (2016) more than delivers on its promises of profanity laden mayhem by stuffing as much food, fighting, foul language, and fornication into an 88 minute runtime as possible, even if it does at points feel tough to swallow. The brilliant premise and fantastic animation make for a great viewing experience, but the religious satire-centric story and constantly shifting focus starts to dull the film by the halfway point. Seth Rogen and Kristen Wiig voice Frank the Sausage and Brenda Bunson respectively, with many Rogen regulars like Michael Cera, James Franco, and Craig Robinson lending their voices, with new additions Edward Norton and Salma Hayek rounding out the cast.
Sausage Party is pointedly focused from the first minute, and starts dispensing with it’s crude humour from the fourth or fifth line of it’s Disney-esque opening song. It’s quite an interesting way to introduce the world, all the while showering the audience with profanity and sight gags. From here until about the half hour mark, Sausage Party is absolutely relentless; every second is filled with visual puns, sex jokes, and world or character building, and, unlike many of the other Rogen and Goldberg collaborations (looking at you, The Interview) it’s dead set on sticking to and expanding its premise. The cast all turn in stellar performances and give a lot of life and feeling to their characters, particularly Michael Cera’s Barry, a height impaired and timid Sausage, and Edward Norton’s Sammy Bagel Jr., a Hebrew Bagel who plays well into the stereotype without becoming too grating.
Unfortunately, the film eventually follows the same route as so many other Rogen and Goldberg comedies and gets caught up in its own reliance on crude humour and stoner jokes instead of situational comedy, which is a real shame, because as stated Sausage Party’s living food premise has so much more potential that it just doesn’t capitalise on. It certainly doesn’t make it a bad film or even an unenjoyable one, but there are some points in the film where it feels as if they’re missing out on something tremendously funny just so they can fit more talking douche jokes in. Yes, one the film’s main antagonists is a juiced-up douche; because apparently it wasn’t dramatic enough for a hot dog to have to combat six foot tall humans hell bent on devouring him.