Sausage Party
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 This film is the leading cause of Anorexia.
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Sausage Party is a 2016 adult computer-animated comedy film directed by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan and written by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg from a story by Rogen, Goldberg, and Jonah Hill. It stars the voices of Rogen (in a dual role), Kristen Wiig, Hill, Bill Hader (in a triple role), Michael Cera, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton, and Salma Hayek.
The film follows an anthropomorphic sausage who lives in a supermarket and discovers the truth about what happens when groceries are purchased leading him on a journey with his friends to escape their fate while also facing a lunatic and malicious douche who wants to kill him.
Nitrogen Studios provided the film's animation. It is the first fully computer-animated movie to be rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
The film's rough cut premiered on March 14, 2016, at South by Southwest, followed by its general theatrical release in the United States on August 12, 2016, by Sony and Columbia Pictures.
The movie received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its animation, story, voice acting, and humor, though its heavy use of profanity received some criticism. It grossed $141 million against a budget of $19 million, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated animated film until it was surpassed by Joker in 2019.
A streaming series based on the film called Sausage Party: Foodtopia was released on July 11, 2024.
Plot
Unbeknownst to humans, a supermarket called Shopwell's is filled with anthropomorphic grocery items that believe that the human shoppers are gods who take purchased groceries to a utopia known as the "Great Beyond". Among the store's groceries is a sausage named Frank, who dreams of living in the Great Beyond with his hot dog bun girlfriend Brenda, and his friends Carl and Barry.
One day, Frank and Brenda's packages are purchased by a female shopper. On their way out of the store, a returned jar of honey mustard tries to warn the groceries that the Great Beyond is not what it is said to be, but nobody listens except Frank. Before committing suicide by falling onto the shop floor, Honey Mustard tells Frank to seek out a bottle of liquor named Firewater.
Honey Mustard's suicide creates an accidental cart collision that causes Frank, Brenda, and several groceries to fall out of the cart, including a Jewish bagel named Sammy Bagel Jr., a Middle-Eastern lavash named Kareem Abdul Lavash, and a nasty and aggressive douche who swears revenge on Frank and Brenda after his nozzle is bent on impact.
Seeking to verify Honey Mustard's warning, Frank leads Brenda, Sammy, and Lavash to the store's liquor aisle. There, he meets Firewater and learns that Firewater and his colleagues, the Non-Perishables, created the white lie of the Great Beyond to assuage the inhabitants' fear of being eaten. Frank vows to reveal the truth and is encouraged to travel beyond the store's freezer section to find proof while Brenda, Sammy, and Lavash are brought to the Mexican food aisle by a bottle of tequila, who is secretly working for Douche, until a lesbian hard taco named Teresa del Taco, who develops a crush on Brenda, helps them escape Douche.
Meanwhile, at the shopper's house, Carl and Barry are horrified to see the shopper cook all the food. Carl spots a nearby open window but is killed from being stabbed and sliced upwards by the shopper behind, leaving Barry to escape alone.
Barry then encounters a human drug addict, who becomes able to communicate with his groceries, one of them being Gum, a Stephen Hawking-like wad of chewing gum, after injecting himself with bath salts. However, the bath salts soon wear off and the addict prepares to cook Barry. The addict accidentally burns himself and Barry yanks his shoelaces, making him slip and causing an axe to fall and decapitate him.
Frank's friends disapprove of his skepticism of the Great Beyond. He discovers a cookbook beyond the freezer section and reveals its contents to the store's inhabitants. They panic at first, but then shortly refuse to believe Frank until Barry, Gum, and the other groceries from the addict's home return with the addict's severed head, proving that the humans can be killed.
The group drugs the human shoppers and employees with toothpicks laced with bath salts, whereupon an epic battle begins. Several humans are gruesomely killed by the groceries while Douche takes control of the store manager Darren. He confronts Frank about becoming a god now that he is in control of Darren and takes a bite out of Frank's torso. Brenda saves Frank as Barry and the other groceries catch Douche and Darren in a garbage pail strapped to propane tanks. They are then launched out of the store as the tanks explode, killing them both. The inhabitants celebrate their victory with a massive orgy.
Later, Frank and his friends visit Firewater, who has a psychedelic experience and discovers that their world is not what they think; they are merely animated characters voiced by famous actors in another dimension. Gum has constructed a portal to this dimension, and the group decides to travel there to confront their creators.
"Goddammit, I blew it..." Qualities
- The plot and writing come off as poorly written with an unoriginal storyline and faulty premise made to cash in on the Toy Story franchise.
- This is why making a movie about talking food and drink would be horrible. Food is an important substance for nutritional support, and everyone in a movie revolving around food would be anorexic and starve to death.
- Most characters are downright boring, moronic, and sometimes unlikable where it’s portrayed in a bad light:
- Frank, while likable, is somewhat of a weak protagonist.
- Brenda, Sammy Bagel Jr, and Kareem Abdul Lavash are pointless secondary characters. Not to mention, Brenda can be unlikable at times.
- Douche is a bland and idiotic antagonist who has a very dumb reason for getting revenge on Frank and Brenda, and he swears way too much.
- The human characters are technically just filler.
- There are a lot of horrible scenes:
- The kitchen massacre scene, which showcases baby carrots getting eaten, the Irish potato getting peeled, and even lettuce getting its eyes gouged out, although to be fair, this is what everybody does in real life.
- The infamous scene where Barry shows the Druggie’s severed head to Frank.
- The infamous scene where Douche drinks from a juice box's crotch area, which basically resembles rape.
- The worst offender of this is the infamous food orgy scene at the end.
- False advertising for two reasons:
- While characters like Carl, Darren, Douche, Druggie, and Honey Mustard appear in other posters and their character posters, they do not have a lot of screen time.
- Even the Blu-Ray back cover claims it is "The best-animated movie of the year" when it’s not.
- It can be very racist and unkind at times, especially with the Jews and Middle Easterners. Even the scene where the Irish potato gets peeled during the kitchen massacre comes off as racist as well.
- There are product placements as usual, such as Mentos, Pop-Tarts, and Coca-Cola.
- Extreme amounts of profanity, especially the F-word, similar to another bad film made by Point Grey Pictures. Remember that approximately 138 instances of profane words are uttered throughout the movie, although not as much as South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut.
- Misleading title: Despite the movie being titled Sausage Party, as if it refers to the orgy scene, the "party" does not happen until the final act of the movie, and even then, there is no reason for why the food has to celebrate with an orgy anyway.
- While the animation is good and not bad at all, it can look uncanny at times, thus there are a couple of animation errors at times, despite the animation being provided by Nitrogen Studios (the same animation company for seasons 12-16 of Thomas & Friends).
- This movie has too many plot holes. The most glaring one is why Shopwell's is treated like it's the only grocery store in the world even though there's a bunch of other grocery stores out there.
- The character designs are awful, with those for Brenda, Lavash, and Teresa being the worst offenders.
- Not to mention, the human designs look more like Fanboy and Chum Chum rejects, while the food designs look like they were reused from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
- Stunt casting: Although Bill Hader performs as well as Firewater, his character has very little screen time in the movie and doesn’t have a huge role whatsoever, making Hader a miscast instead.
- The climactic orgy scene can easily be seen as the worst part of the entire movie. Heck, even someone like Peter Griffin, Patrick Star, or Homer Simpson could have ridiculed something like this.
- Even though it says it's a "parody" of a Pixar movie, it feels more connected to Sony Pictures Animation.
- This movie has easily some of the worst pacing compared to any adult animated movie, as some scenes tend to drag on forever are way too fast-paced, or end a little bit early giving it very little time to rest, albeit running at 88 minutes runtime, the pacing feels a lot more like 55 minutes runtime, due to the atrocious pacing and overall lack of focus of the plot in general.
- The biggest, and overall worst offender of this is the food orgy scene, due to how long it drags and how completely off-model the characters are, especially with Brenda.
- It's quite easy for the movie to be mistaken for kids due to it being animated. The whole movie isn't appropriate for children to watch.
- Don't even get us on the film's inferior series sequel; Foodtopia.
"The Great Beyond" Qualities
- The idea of making a CGI-animated movie geared towards adults is pretty interesting but was unfortunately poorly executed due to the reasoning explained above.
- Likewise, this film along with Fritz the Cat does quite a good job delivering one big middle finger to Hollywood itself and its ideology of "animated movies are just for kids".
- Spot-on CGI animation (by Nitrogen Studios (the same animation company for seasons 12-16 of Thomas & Friends), even by 2016 standards, which is very spot-on and greatly reflects that of a Sony Pictures Animation film.
- The voice acting is pretty good, especially thanks to actors like Seth Rogen (who later voiced Donkey Kong in The Super Mario Bros. Movie) and Kristen Wiig.
- Some character designs are not that bad, like those for Frank and Sammy.
- Decent direction by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan.
- There are a few funny scenes to be found on occasion, such as the injured juice box scene.
- “EXTERMINATE THE JUICE!”
- "What did they do to you?" "...You don't wanna fuckin' know.."
- Clever uses of double entendres.
- Incredibly good story and humor.
- Good soundtrack by Alan Menken and Christopher Lennertz.
- Some characters happen to be likable, and enjoyable.
- Frank Wienerton is a very likable character, as he is the only one who listens to Honey Mustard's warning about the Great Beyond, and he also gets good character development throughout the film as after everyone dislikes him for disrespecting their beliefs, he takes Barry's advice about giving them hope and apologizes for acting like he had all the answers.
- The first half of the movie was good until we got to the aforementioned kitchen massacre scene.
- The late Meat Loaf as a meatloaf.
Reception
Despite receiving positive feedback from critics, Sausage Party did meet some mixed to negative audience reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has an approval rating of 82% based on 239 reviews, with an average rating of 6.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Sausage Party is definitely offensive, but backs up its enthusiastic profanity with an impressively high laugh-to-gag ratio -- and a surprisingly thought-provoking storyline." with an audience score of 50%.
The film has a score of 66 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Chicken Zeke hated the movie he ranked it an "F" saying "I didn’t like the movie, it should have been competed for Raspberry Worst Picture instead, but it is not as bad as Ralph Breaks the Internet and The Emoji Movie."
The Mysterious Mr. Enter gave the film an "F-", saying “I thought this was the worst movie Columbia Pictures made, but it wasn’t until 6 years later when they made Hotel Transylvania 4 and turned their beloved Halloween franchise into a generic Ice Age 6 rehash.”
Saru91 gave the film an "F-" saying, “A very ridiculous R-rated CGI animated movie, which is just like other bad Columbia Pictures movies.”
Trivia
- A common misconception people have towards the film is thinking it's kid-friendly due to the fact it's animated when it isn't, in fact, there was some controversy regarding this when a trailer of the movie was accidentally advertised in a Brenden theater in Concord, California during a screening of Finding Dory, most people have also been critical towards the film due to it's "looks kid-friendly but isn't" nature.
- This film was once given an NC-17 rating due to the scenes with Lavash's scrotum showing pubic hair, so the hair had to be digitally shaved in order for the film to earn an R-rating.
- Both Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon will later directed The Addams Family and its sequel.
