Reviewing The Film ‘Sausage Party’

Sausage Party

Directors: Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon

Cast: Voices of Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton, Bill Hader, Salma Hayek, Danny McBride, James Franco, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd

Screenplay: Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg

Rating: R; pervasive crude sexual content, strong profanity and violence, drug content

Running time: 89 min.

Grade: B

In between such gems, Sausage Party can get a little too crude for comfort. After years of cuddly talking animals, space creatures and trained dragons, it’s good to see CGI animation finally put to decadent use. That’s okay.

Frank (Rogen) is part of a package on a supermarket shelf, next to a pack of hot dog buns where Brenda (Kristen Wiig) resides. There, they will make love, as wieners and buns do. They’re in love, awaiting the Fourth of July when they’ll be selected together, leaving the store for “the Great Beyond” where human “gods” live.The hero, of course, is a wiener for easy phallic symbolism.

Turns out there are reasons some foods should be washed before cooking, starting with their wee pottymouths. A cleanup on Aisle 9 might be any number of culinary fluids, outrageously expelled.Not a single lewd pun or food blasphemy gets past Seth Rogen’s latest friendsourced mugging of political correctness.

A bottle of booze shaped like an Indian and named Firewater (Bill Hader) has clues and a kazoo for smoking pot. A sexy taco (Salma Hayek) has eyes for Brenda.Standing in Frank and Brenda’s way is a energy drink-raging feminine hygiene product (Nick Kroll), behaving exactly like what he is. This is a Seth Rogen joint, you know. Frank’s runty package mate Barry (Michael Cera) escapes the kitchen to help his buddy.

Frank and Brenda are separated by a shopper, so he leads a rescue expedition into the Great Beyond, discovering the horrifying truth of what happens when groceries get home.Then a returned jar of honey mustard (Danny McBride) spreads word that the beyond isn’t so great.

Sausage Party also gets a bit exhausting, even running under 90 minutes. We’re hearing essentially the same dirty jokes over and over, in a movie saved by its brilliantly filthy finale.Is it funny? Absolutely.

Sausage Party’s most genuine comedy comes in sick set pieces; a grocery store mishap patterned on Saving Private Ryan, a kitchen scene when even baby carrots are massacred, a climactic food orgy.Too often, however, the writers go for easy blush-laughs, not that much more creative than stoned frat boys riffing after a food run.

In a dominant era for family-friendly animation, Sausage Party is a bold rebuttal needing more than shock laughs.

Carl, voiced by Jonah Hill, and Barry, voiced by Michael Cera, in the new movie “Sausage Party.

Such animated outrage isn’t new; Ralph Bakshi’s Fritz the Cat broke the old X rating (now NC-17) barrier way back in 1972. Sausage Party is, however, the first R-rated CGI animated movie, combining the sleekness of a Pixar flick with Rogen’s groin-centric comedy. Just what we need. State of the art smut.