Sausage Party: Dark & Hilarious, Do Not Bring The Family [Review]

I’ve been looking forward to this movie all year, since I first saw the trailer.    It looked like comedy genius.  And it WAS.  Animation was made for funny movies I think, and that includes adult humor too. Somehow bright colors make things funnier, I’m not sure what that is.   As usual, I won’t spoil this film, everything that I discuss here can easily be seen in the trailers.  

A sausage strives to discover the truth about his existence.

What a dark film.  It would be pretty horrifying if it wasn’t so funny. But it was hilarious (and still a bit horrifying).   I’m a fan of dark humor and there was a LOT of dark humor in this film.  I loved LOVED watching it take the piss out of so many things.  Religion, most especially, gets a lot of treatment.  But it also poked at war, political correctness and relationships and all kinds of other issues in a way that was really clever.  Not all the jokes hit home, some were a bit tone-deaf or out of place or maybe they just weren’t funny, I don’t know.  But most hilarious.  SO many puns.  I laughed.  A LOT.  

One thing that was harder to notice because of how hard I was laughing was how well this film was made.  It was well written – the pacing was perfect and the dialogue was sharp.  The colors were amazing (I only know this because I was actually looking for it).  The character design was clever and apt. (you could easily recognize each character in silhouette).  The way they took a supermarket and made it into streets and mountains and bars and whatever else was ingenious.   The little world of the supermarket after dark was a little ecosystem, it was a lot of fun to watch.

The voice acting was amazing.  My very favorite was The Douch, played by Nick Kroll.   I also very much liked Gum.  (you’ll see).  Also Darren, the supermarket manager who hated his job, played by Paul Rudd.  The whole gang  from This is the End was there:  James Franco, Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride et al.  It was fun to close my eyes and see if I could guess the actor who was playing each piece of food.  I was right more often than I was wrong.  

I didn’t really like the ending.  I don’t know what I was expecting; the entire premise of the movie was based an existential crisis – what if your only reason for existing was to be eaten by your gods?  Not a lot of places you could go with that and still be a comedy.  But I will say I was surprised by what actually happened.  I guess the ending fit and it was absolutely magnificent.   There were actually quite a lot of unexpected bits, so many things I did not see coming.  Haha, coming.  It was impressive how well animated characters of daily household foods and products can portray human interactions in a unique way.
So is Sausage Party worth seeing?  Yes, oh my god yes.  Unless you’re easily offended or shocked.  If you don’t like South Park, you won’t like this.  But Sausage Party is a good time, I’ll definitely be seeing it again. This could be the funniest movie I’ve seen all year.  You should see it, even if you just rent it.  Bonus points if you immediately go grocery shopping right afterwards, like I did.  That’s a lot of fun.