Seth Rogen Brings The Raunch

Rating: 8/10 (31 August 2016)

Minor/Vague Spoilers
Sausage (but really Hot Dog) Party is a satirical, non-family friendly, animated comedy film directed by Greg Tiernan, his feature film debut. It was really interesting to note that Tiernan has swung in the completely opposite direction from his previous works on Thomas & Friends where he introduced CGI into the series. Tiernan and his wife founded Nitrogen Studios Canada, Inc. in 2003, and he used his studio for pre and post-production in this film.
Lead star and writer, Seth Rogen, has been working on this film for eight years and has said that studios were scared to pick it up because of its R rating. Eventually Sony Pictures and Annapurna Pictures would partner and co-finance the film and fast forward to August 2016 and here it is.
First thing's first, if you are not a fan of Seth Rogen's comedy then this might not be the movie for you. This is very low brow and way over the top and considering he called all his buddies (James Franco, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Danny McBride) for roles in the movie his style of comedy shines bright like the entrance to The Great Beyond.
On a basic level the film could be described as Toy Story with food, the same way The Secret Life of Pets could be described as Toy Story with pets. It clearly is going off past Disney/Pixar films that use this concept and posing the question, "what if our food had feelings?"
From the trailers I had thought there would be more involved with being at the woman's house and trying to escape The Great Beyond and get back to Shopwell's, the films supermarket where all the food resides. The Great Beyond is the world outside the supermarket and that is what the food items perceive to be a Heaven and the real life people are Gods.
What really took me by surprise, in a good way, was how the film used satire and social commentary to talk about real things such as religion, politics, and war all portrayed by stereotypical food items from their respective countries.
While, there were moments that showed it was self-aware (specifically one scene involving cheese) and smart, it did not shy away from being EXTREMELY raunchy. One of the final scenes was especially raunchy and while I was shocked to be watching what I was, I couldn't help myself but laugh my ass off. The scene just kept going and going but didn't get old, it just built upon itself and made it more hilarious.
The film also has many different elements to it (Horror, meta, raunchy) such as the scene where the food items find out that The Great Beyond isn't what they thought it would be and it turns into a horror comedy. Even though most of the scene is shown in the trailers it still plays out quite well, just not as hilarious as if I hadn't watched the trailers 10 times over.
There is a bit of a lull in the middle where they take the time to do some world building inside the shopping centre where each aisle is like another country. The jokes do come to a halt here but I see it as necessary for the film because it enables us to get introduced to a whole world instead of just the hot dog and a bun.
The ending to this film could open it up to a sequel if they choose to make one (heres hoping they do)! It gets very meta and for a moment I thought the movie wasn't over but instead the credits hit and Sausage Party Two is left as just a twinkle in our eyes. Hopefully, it doesn't take another eight years to get it into theatres.