A missed opportunity

Rating: 5/10 (7 September 2016)

Animation type movies have been increasing in popularity over the last couple of years. In 2016 alone more than 50 animation style movies have been released. These type of movies are mostly for children to enjoy and, although they're still fairly enjoyable for adults, are never really meant for an adult audience. Seth Rogan and consorts have set out to change that by creating the first ever R-rated animation movie called 'Sausage Party'. In this movie we follow a living hotdog called Frank who lives in a supermarket together with other food products who are also amongst the living. All of them view us humans as gods and are joyfully awaiting the day they are picked up, placed in a shopping cart ready to go towards the promised land. When they get there though they'll quickly discover that things aren't what they thought it would be as they are devoured by their revered gods without remorse. Eventually Frank and his friends get chosen, but they are quickly separated after a horrible shopping cart incident. The rest of the movie has us follow Frank and a few of his friends as they try to find each other while discovering more about the terrible gods us humans actually are.
As an animation style movie 'Sausage Party' really isn't one of the prettiest of the bunch. That does not mean all that much though since Pixar has really spoiled us as of late. The universe that they were able to create was still very colorful and it did actually feel like a living and breathing world. This is really quite an accomplishment considering it was done with a budget that is only ten percent of the one 'Finding Dory' had. The way some characters were animated was also pretty good, but it is quite clear a little more thought should have gone into their overall design as the universe of 'Sausage Party' is not all that consistent. Sometimes the food itself is alive while other times it's just the packaging that's alive and in some special cases this holds true for both of them. The manner in which the characters are presented also varies a lot. Most characters only have a cartoonish face with stick figure hands and feet while others feature a design that actually suits the type of food they are. An example of this would be Sammy Bagel Jr. whose mouth is the big gaping hole in the middle of his body. All of this does not take away from the overall enjoyment of the film, but a little more polish would have gone a long way.
Scattered throughout this film are some amazing comedic moments. For instance the aforementioned shopping cart incident was brilliantly framed as if it was a scene taken straight out of 'Saving Private Ryan', with some minor alterations of course. Even some small moments were very well done. The very first time the f-word is uttered is a great example of this since it was initially presented as if one was watching a PG-rated movie. Most of the jokes do not reach this level however and a lot of them just aren't that clever. It is quite clear that the creators wanted to use their R-rating to the fullest extent and the supposedly funny part in a lot of jokes wasn't really the joke itself but more so the absurdity of it. Initially this works really well however after just a few jokes this novelty quickly wears off causing a lot of jokes to feel repetitive and most of them are dead on arrival. The jokes are also not that well distributed throughout the film. There are almost no jokes in the second act which was probably intentional in a failed attempt at trying to go out with a bang. A lot of jokes seemed forced in and it is obvious that a lot of characters were only created for some minor food puns. What does work really well is the very decent voice acting done by Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and many others. To me it seemed as if they themselves were having a lot of fun recording their voices which definitely helped make some hit-or-miss jokes succeed.
What plagues this film are some weird creative decisions. Riddled throughout the movie are some of the worst attempts at social commentary I have ever seen. Now social commentary itself is not a bad thing and it can really enhance a movie when it is presented with some subtlety. That is not the case in 'Sausage Party' though as almost every scene kept hammering on the idea that one should never have faith in something without questioning it. It is possible that this decision was made in an attempt to parody most animation movies since a lot of them feature social commentary to some extent, but it misses its mark regardless of intent. What could also be considered a parody to some extent would be the movies main antagonist. This character is extremely annoying and only has a minor influence on the overarching story. Again the creators of 'Sausage Party' make a weird creative decision since the overall scenario was already a perfect villain. The movie really did not need a physical one.
Ultimately 'Sausage Party' is a missed opportunity. The few good sequences really hint at what could have been an excellent comedic movie. If a little more thought and polish had gone into its creation this certainly would have been the case, but as of right now it's just a mediocre summer flick.
My Rating: 5/10