When you go to see a movie starring Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Michael Cera, you should probably already have a good idea what you’re getting into. When that film happens to be an animated feature called Sausage Party, you really have no excuse for being unprepared to watch 90 minutes of nonsensical, childish humour. Having said that, even with the bar set so far down in the gutter, Sausage Party goes out of its way to be as puerile, offensive and ridiculous as possible.
The story follows the secret life of foodstuffs (and other inanimate objects) inside a supermarket as they wait for the gods (i.e. humans) to transport them to “the great beyond”. Led by the intrepid hotdog Frank, they slowly come to realise that the world outside their automatic sliding doors isn’t all they’ve been duped into thinking it is. While this thinly-veiled attack on religion provides the main impetus of the story, it’s regularly overwhelmed with food puns, sexual references and a quantity of swearing that would make even dockers grimace in disgust.
The film clearly wants to emulate the winning combination of toilet humour and smart, topical commentary that has made Tre Parker and Matt Stone such global success stories with South Park and Team America: World Police. While there are some vaguely clever analogies which touch upon (and disrespect) all manner of hot topics, including racial tensions, homosexuality and gender equality, they seem to be quite pleased with themselves simply by working on two levels, rather than using those levels to say anything meaningful.
Its lack of depth and incisiveness means that Sausage Party falls well short of the smart/stupid dynamic it’s aiming for, ending up as far too immature to really hold proper comedic merit. What’s more, there really is no need for the exorbitant amount of swearing on show; the joke of seeing characters normally associated with children’s films eff and jeff their way through an entire movie wears thin within the first five minutes.
Nevertheless, the storyline is engaging enough and the runtime short enough for audiences to feel vaguely amused throughout, with a handful of excellent jokes bringing the odd belly laugh in amongst a sea of titters and smiles. If you go in expecting an inane hour and a half of adolescent humour, with not a high-brow gag in sight, you shouldn’t be too disappointed.