★★★☆
“What the flying fuck?” is how any review of Sausage Party should begin. After all, that’s the general sentiment that flies around your head as the movie gets real deep inside ya.
The movie, the brain child-gremlin of Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Evan Goldberg, is being heralded as an animation film for adults. Jam-packed with cameos from almost every Saturday Night Live comedian and Hollywood ‘it’ personality, co-directed by the guy that brought us Shrek 2 and scored by Alan Menken, the composer behind ‘A Whole New World’ and ‘Colours Of The Wind’, the film quite literally bulges with promise.
If Superbad, Pineapple Express, The Interview, South Park and American Dad were all to fall into a vat of expletives, food fetishes, atheistic principles and food porn – literal food porn, that is – the mix might just resemble Sausage Party.
Rarely have horror and fascination been so closely in partnership. The film is a plain ole orgy, the likes of which Rome never saw – an orgy of satire, an orgy of gore and, fancy that, just a straight up sexual orgy, with intercourse featuring heavily in a plot that slides through the digestive system like a slimy and oozing rack of ribs.
The score is mesmerising, all soaring melodies and charming harmonies, making you laugh, sing, squirm and choke. The animation too is stellar, but it’s in the layers of satirical dialogue, character quirk and the juggernaut of metaphor that Sausage Party finds the sweet spot. Our brain, moral compass and sense of self are all put through the grater, as verbal exchanges collaborate with impeccable animation to create constant dualisms.
It’s also a surprisingly clever film. The mind is consistently viewing, decoding and analysing the surface offerings to taste the saucier flavours within the layers. Yes, this film is out to shock you. It is out to be controversial. Seth Rogen has even been quoted as saying he’s mystified as to why a studio allowed him to make this film.
Complete with heavy lashings of weed, ideological liberalism, profanity and enlightenment in all its forms, Sausage Party is a satirical stab at the innocent flicks they make over at Disney, even if the film itself would not only make Walt roll in his grave but also revoke everything he contributed to make his empire.
In summary: shit, fuck, balls and cracker jacks up the bleeding arse. That about sums the film up.
Sausage Partyis in cinemas now.
