Sausage Party (2016) Review

It's another morning at local supermarket Shopwell's, and confident, excitable wiener Frank has only two goals for the day: to end up with Brenda, a neighboring hot dog bun, and to be handpicked by the hands of the "gods" themselves. According to legend, those who are chosen to take the journey to the great beyond will experience pure bliss, being treated like royalty while surrounded by their utmost desires. After one fateful, but rather messy day, the two find themselves separated from their packs, while the rest of their respective groups of friends are taken away to the promised land. Banding together with a whiny bread product named Sammy Bagel Jr. and a rather grumpy Vash named Lavash, the group set out on an adventure that will expose a horrifying reality for all consumable items that could change the very means of their own fragile existence and once-thought perfect future.



Honestly, after pasting that poster and typing up that synopsis seen above, how does one even properly start a review about a theatrical release such as this? Admittedly, conjuring up something worth saying about a film that was most likely born out of way too much free time and entirely way too much marijuana and psychedelic use is far more difficult than it sounds. Writer/producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who at this point on are the furthest things from strangers to regular cinephiles, seemingly have some of the biggest balls in the entertainment industry. They have not only managed to keep the idea of the "stoner comedy" alive and well, but recently even managed to finally adapt one of the most popular comic books of all time to television after so many before them attempted or failed to do so. Conceptualizing and realizing a motion picture such as Sausage Party is just so incredibly strange though. After all, an animated tale about food that must band together once they realize that their ultimate fate is to end up inside the mouths and stomachs of those who they once cherished and revered? That....is a really, really silly basis for any big screen show that cost nineteen million dollars to make. In fact, it borders on just plain idiotic, with the possibility of this series of niche jokes wearing thin after a shockingly short amount of time has passed.


Thankfully, Sausage Party, directed by animation veteran Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2, Monsters vs Aliens) and relative newcomer Greg Tiernan, is also incredibly, absurdly funny. In fact, next to February's Deadpool (the argument for which flick is more crude will certainly pop up soon), I can't recall a time this year where I laughed this much in a theater. A sizable chunk of the movie's humor is built off of running with the "ridiculous" factor, managing to appeal to a wider array of fans than even those who viewed the trailer would believe that it could accomplish. True, most audiences will still consist of real-life counterparts of those who we saw throughout pictures like Half Baked and Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle, but it won't be made up of solely dopes like some critics think that it will be. It's like picking up a cheap item on the menu from a restaurant that you expect to be at least decent, but are surprised that its taste and size is actually comparable to that of the more expensive entrees.


For a premise that looks fairly simple on paper, there actually is more going on in Sausage Party that one would suspect. There are the food equivalents of race wars and divides, religious conflicts, and multiple discussions about sexuality that permeate throughout its crisp, smooth running time. Of course, the obvious hot dog and bun jokes are something that even your average eighth grader could come up with, as are some of the puns and one-liners from our primary antagonist of the picture (hilariously voiced by the supremely underrated Nick Kroll), but they're forgivable in the long run considering how many quips, one-liners, and amusing anecdotes manage to stick their landing so well. There is also a fairly funny allegory for arguments about one's views on deities. It also strays away from one of my very few fears that I had about the trailer by not shoving any sort of theme into the picture about not consuming certain products. Every single piece of produce, meat, spice, and sauce are treated equally in the film, and you feel horrible for any segment that involves their grisly demise. Mind you, there is a good chance that you will be laughing heartily during said sequences too like I was doing more times than I could count.


Some may complain that Sausage Party's animation is pretty average, and you wouldn't be incorrect. Hell, I can think of a myriad of pictures released by DreamWorks during the first half of the 2000s that look better than this. But if you were looking for that to be your main draw or attraction, then I believe that you are searching for the wrong type of flick. As one would also suspect, the voice cast is rather large and in fine form. Sure, Seth Rogen and his usual band of misfits and cohorts are here (ask me who in particular shows up, and I can answer "yes" to each guess before you even finish their full name), but after this many products have been released that feature his name attached to it, you should fully expect that. Some Saturday Night Live alumni also pop up, including Bill Hader (Trainwreck, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs) as an aged bottle of whiskey who somehow manages to convince me that one can smoke assorted things through a kazoo, and Kristen Wiig (Ghostbusters, Welcome To Me) as Frank's buxom, fluffy love interest. However, snagging veteran performers like Edward Norton (American History X, Fight Club) and Salma Hayek (From Dusk Til Dawn, Frida) could not have been an easy task. Then again, if I was the former actor, I might relish the chance to voice a bagel who utters the phrase "mashugana cunt" if the opportunity presented itself to me.


I am well aware that there are younger people who occasionally check out my own reviews, but I would say that as a closet one myself, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are living proof that all stoners or potheads should not be stereotyped. Heck, movies like this were made to be enjoyed with friends who are equally sick-minded and willing to drink a beer or partake in smoking something that should not be illegal before the screening takes place. Sausage Party is a much more well-crafted project than it has the right to be, balancing outrageous, vulgar humor with some heart, a clever script, and a fairly good message about solidarity during times of chaos and violence. Oh, and its third act manages to jump the shark in the type of manner that drives it from "good" to "great." In a way, it's the foulmouthed, deranged cousin of another animated release from earlier in the year that also had fine intentions and preached what we all need to be hearing in this tough climate that we are waiting for to be over in several months from now.



Let's just hope that's the last time I ever compare a motion picture from Disney to another film containing rampant use of bath salts though.

Unseen Terror 2013: Day 17

Left alone to herself for the evening, a popular high school girl decides to throw a slumber party sleepover for herself and her friends at the house. She even invites the new girl from school, who after hearing some catty talk about herself, declines the invitation. That night, after the girls arrive, an escaped murderer with an affinity for power drills makes his way to the neighborhood with bloodshed in mind, and the only hope for survival may come in the form of the new girl from high school.

You know, I was shocked with how far I've come with this year's marathon, but somehow I've yet to look at a single slasher film from any decade. That changed with a viewing of one of the lost relics from the 1980s, The Slumber Party Massacre. With the recent string of "Killer Women" and "female power" horror films I've been viewing over the past few days, you might be wondering how in the world something with a title such as this could be categorized under either of those. And I'll confess that outside of a script written by noted feminist author and writer Rita Mae Brown, it really can't. I think I'm just running out of gas.

Plot-wise, the film isn't exactly trying to break new grounds, but Brown's original intentions were for it to be a parody of the then-burgening slasher genre. Not surprisingly, the film's producers insisted the film be played as a straight horror film instead. Given this choice, it does make it somewhat uneven in the end, but you can still get a feel for the screenplay's original intentions, even amongst the oodles of sleaze. And I feel that I should mention the sleaze before I forget, because this film doesn't waste your time giving what you want and remarkably fast. I clocked the first shot of nudity at approximately two minutes in and the first kill at about four or five minutes in, if not less. Whether this was Brown's choice or the choice of director Amy Holden Jones (who went on to write Beethoven of all films), I have no idea.

The comedic parts were also necessary to keep it grounded and from being too routine (great gag involving a refrigerator), and the women themselves, as hard to distinguish as they can be at times, do have some charisma in the lead up to the inevitable title massacre. Even by slasher movie standards, some of their age discrepancies are noticeable though. Speaking of our slasher, his choice of weapon for a large portion of the film's running time (a criminally short seventy-seven minutes) is a power drill, which I will have to admit is fairly cool. I've always admired the "simple, but effective" ideology when it comes to the mindsets of killers in cinema, though I'd certainly say that this killer's mindset isn't exactly the most complicated, as it seems he just simply likes to murder pretty, young people. Slumber's gore isn't off the charts either, but given its original intentions, this wasn't about trying to set records in that book. If you want crazy gore in your slasher films, you can still view films like The Burning and the Friday the 13th films after all.

In the end, The Slumber Party Massacre is a fun time if you're into these type of pictures, but those not crazy about slasher cinema might want to stay clear. The script is certainly better than it lets on to be, as are the performances from the main cast, but it definitely feels like this was marketed more towards the fans than anything else, or at least towards those more fanatical about the genre than anything else. I had a pretty good time overall, but that doesn't mean you will. I've heard very mixed things about the sequels that have been released throughout the years, but I actually wouldn't be opposed to seeing a concept like this remade down the line, with perhaps a similar writer in mind, but with the original intention of it being a parody being fully realized.

Tomorrow, we're actually back to the present (and revisiting the past) with CARRIE!