'Sausage Party' relies too heavily on one key joke: the animated food swears. And this goes on for eighty-nine minutes.

Rating: 5/10 (5 September 2016)

'Sausage Party' is an animated comedy conceived by Seth Rogan and crew, a supposedly subversive satire centred on a single premise: the anthropomorphised animated food swears. A lot. The flick should have used its R-rating to its advantage by telling a more adult, nuanced story that appeals to grown-up sensibilities and issues. Instead, all we get is a preposterous PG plot peppered prominently with plenty of profanity. Seriously, the only jokes in the film revolve around the characters cursing and that gets tiring after mere minutes – I personally was tired of it from the multiple times I have viewed the trailer. Once you accept that the food are all adults and will therefore say adult things using adult language, there is nothing to laugh about as no actual jokes are being made. There isn't subtlety here, with immature crudity perforating the picture and seemingly replacing actual comedy at times. It is a missed opportunity, one with few surprises and even fewer laughs, which comes across as severely under-cooked.
The plot, as I said, is like something ripped straight out of Pixar's 'discarded ideas' pile. Instead of breaking down and circumventing the traditional Disney-esque formula, the film panders to it indefinitely. As such, the story is very by-the-numbers and predictable. The central premise is also inconsistent; some of the characters aren't actually food-stuffs (i.e. a condom or a toilet- roll) but still appear alive, whilst other similar objects aren't sentient at all (like shoes and shopping carts etc.) The other issue also comes when it is shown that cereal boxes and bags of crisps are sentient themselves, as opposed to the individual fillings, but the hot-dogs are shown to all be alive despite being contained in a packet similar to the aforementioned items. This hurts the credibility of the piece and, though it isn't a huge issue, it did take me out of the movie on more than one occasion. The actual narrative seems like it could be a kid's film, with a number of the jokes feeling ironically childish, so the added sexual humour and frequent cursing almost seem like an afterthought. Instead of using the R-rating to its full potential to craft an adult tale, in the vein of other animated features like 'Anomalisa', the creators simply throw juvenile jokes and immature crudity at the proverbial wall and hope it sticks. This means that the feature seems like a one-trick pony, riding entirely on the premise that was funny in a 2 minute trailer but can't sustain itself for a full feature. It culminates in an outlandish third act that's a little too out-there even for a movie about talking sausages. There is a scene towards the end that is very vulgar and over-the-top, but it isn't funny and goes on for ages. I can see why this would make people uncomfortable as it kind of comes out of nowhere and is very unnecessary. Plus, the final revelation is unearned and ridiculous – so much so that it leaves a sour taste in your mouth after the flick ends.
The most glaring issue with the picture is that I didn't find it funny at all. I cracked a smile maybe once, which means that it sort of fails as a comedy. Like I mentioned, the food cursing gets old fast and starts to become a little obnoxious. Other than that key premise, there isn't much to laugh at aside from a few tired and oddly childish food-puns. I'm not going to lie though, a gag about 'meatloaf' and a reference to 'T2: Judgement Day' were both subtle, fairly amusing and well-done. The other main element to the piece is its satire; a hyper-stylised view of religion, as well as a push towards blatant atheism. It culminates in a pretty positive message of acceptance, teamwork, hope and respecting people's beliefs but is half-baked on the whole. The allegory doesn't gel properly with its real-life counter-part, meaning that it lacks in impact and ends up going around in circles. Every character is a stereotype, too, which some people may find offensive. There are no real character arcs and none of them have any depth; they mainly exist to illicit a chuckle at the expense of the culture, race or religion they represent without actually making a joke. The flick seems to think that stereotypically portraying a culture as a specific food-type is enough to count as clever comedy.
The voice acting is all fairly good here but, aside from Edward Norton, the players aren't doing anything special; they are convincing though, giving off the appropriate emotions at the appropriate times, and can be quite nuanced occasionally. The animation itself isn't the best, but is competent and convincing despite a clearly lower budget. The actual CGI looks rubbery and the character designs, especially those of the humans, are often flawed. The people are pretty poor here, looking disproportionate and generally weird, but luckily there isn't too many of them. The music is generic and unnoticeable, with an opening musical number coming across as out-of-place, nonsensical and overly-cheesy.
Overall, 'Sausage Party' is an under-cooked disappointment that relies too much on a joke that was only moderately chuckle worthy to begin with; the animation is decent but not outstanding, the character designs are odd, the narrative is generic and the flick isn't funny. I don't hate the film, it isn't egregious and not the worst of the year, but it could've – and should've - been much better: 5/10