Frank (a sausage) and Betty (a bun) are looking forward to finally getting more than just their tips together once they are purchased, and get to go to the great beyond. Yet there are rumours that the great beyond is a lie, and that horror and death await. And, worse, it turns out that the rumours are true!
Sausage Party is a CGI movie which combines a story based on a pleasing and very silly premise, what if your food was actually alive? and Seth Rogen’s crew of the usual suspects, both writers and performers. This means that is delivered with a healthy dose of pure filth – toilet humour, profanity, drugs and sex.
Lauren Miller and Seth Rogen at the World Premiere of Sausage Party in Los Angeles.
Let’s make no bones about it: much of what we see is infantile, and designed to shock and outrage, as anyone who was seen any of Rogen’s work will already know.
Having said that, it’s pretty funny stuff, well animated and voiced, and a much needed antidote to the mostly squeaky-clean CGI features which come out from Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks et al.
And it has a bit of substance, too. Lavash (Arabic unleavened bread) and Jewish Sammy the bagel are at odds, what with being stocked on the same aisle. When Lavash is confronted with the unpleasant truth that he will not be presented with unlimited virgin olive oil on arriving in the great beyond, why, the obvious solution is masses of joyous gay sex with the bagel, isn’t it?
I’m not sure if this is the most profound commentary on the Middle East problem I’ve ever encountered, or the most ridiculous and depraved. It is possibly both. But it also shows that there is more to this silly, silly, crude, crass and very funny film than meets the eye.
The film finishes with a comprehensive orgy with much imaginative comestible copulation, and a final meta-fictional resolution, and I walked out chuckling, while wondering what the hell it was I had just seen.