Crass, Crude, Vulgar, Nasty, Funny

Rating: 4/10 (5 September 2016)

Before watching Sausage Party, I read a few articles about the movie, as I do before I watch virtually any new movie. What struck me most was my finding that the movie originally earned an NC-17 rating. I wondered how a movie about cartoon food could possibly accomplish that.
As it turned out, I only needed to watch the opening few minutes before I understood. After the remaining 90 minutes passed, I wondered how the movie in its current form managed to escape with a mere R rating. I saw an abundance of reasons no one under 17 should watch the movie, including the avalanche of explicit sexual descriptions, graphic drug use (apparently food can use drugs, who knew?), and sins against humanity committed by a douche. And that's not all. Not even close.
From beginning to end, Sausage party will disgust you. It will appall you. It will make you never look at tacos the same way again.
The entire movie is a gigantic f*** fest. By that I mean verbal f-bombs are dropped left and right, and (minor spoiler alert, but who I am kidding—you should know what's coming) all the foods literally take part in a gigantic f*** fest.
The filmmakers save this for the end, of course. In the final scene, the store's foods erupt into an all-inclusive, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, interracial (at least, as much as cartoon foods can have races) and wildly creative orgy that would make a progressive citizen of 2016 proud. Or just really grossed out.
As repulsive as that may sound, the movie isn't all bad. Somewhere along the way as you view all that lewd, pornographic material (at least as much as cartoon foods can be pornographic, which as it turns out, they can be jarringly pornographic), you will laugh. Maybe it will only be a confused, disbelieving, uncomfortable laugh. But you will laugh.
Even after reading this, the depths of unhinged sexuality in this movie will still surprise you. I laid out in no uncertain terms, what you should expect, and the sexual content will still surprise you. And that's not the only surprising aspect of this movie, which is a cartoon. Did I mention that? Even if I did, it bears repeating.
The other startling aspect of the movie is the volume of racial stereotypes unleashed through the portrayals of food. At first, this struck me terribly distasteful and unfunny. Soon I realized that these stereotypes were so grossly exaggerated that they actually functioned as a sort of self-aware jab at racial jokes made in typical R-rated comedies.
In fact, I'm just now realizing that the entire movie is essentially an ironic depiction of the typical R-rated comedy. They turned the sexuality up to 11 to poke fun at the other movies that fall back on obvious sex jokes to create laughs.
On many members of the audience, this intention may have been lost. It likely only became evident to some of the most discerning movie-goers as they watched (it may also have dawned on some of the less discerning viewers days later as they wrote about the movie).
So there you have it. I didn't bother addressing any specifics of the movie, such as, character names or plot lines. If you want that stuff, fine. One hotdog is named Frank and the foods freak out when they learn that humans eat food. Not quite as complicated as Inception.
Anyway, if you're looking for a crass comedy to supply a few laughs, this could be the movie for you. If you desire something self-aware that takes a subtle jab at the average raunchy comedy, this movie could also be for you. (It's odd to realize that there's a subtlety to this movie, considering that most of the sexual jokes contain absolutely zero subtlety. It's a neat trick).
Whatever your preference, just don't see Sausage Party with your parents. Even if you're thirty and have kids of your own, don't see it with your parents. I bet it would still be weird.