Seth Rogen, never one to just coast along with the usual late-night stops during a press tour, brought the Sausage Party to a NY grocery store by strategically planting animatronic food items and then voicing their anguish from a hidden location.
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Turns out he’s in a ton of trouble with the SJW’s (Social Justice Warriors) for perceived racial stereotypes in his new movie, Sausage Party, which comes out today. And on top of all the raunch, Sausage Party positions itself as an elaborate, somewhat incongruous allegory about atheism and organized religion. The one exception being Franco’s druggie character, who can understand the food when he’s high on bath salts, but unlike the toys in Toy Story, the food makes no attempts to hide its free will.
Plus, there’s a cracking little clip from the film at the end, in which Kristen Wiig’s character Brenda, a curvaceous hot dog bun, tells her human captor: “Stay away from my sausage, you skank!”
Sausage Party stars Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton, and Selma Hayek.
Is the film itself as clever as its premise? Rogen’s comic sense is often like a developmentally arrested, boy-man version of finding it amusing when a child says something dirty, and it gets wearisome. The one involving bath salts, by the way, is especially impressive and has a fantastic payoff. However, once it was clarified for Combs that the movie was animated, he was no longer interested.
As for the religion allegory, it’s ambitious but not thought out: the conclusion seems to be that atheists are right, but should use a softer and more respectful tone when explaining things to non-believers.
If you haven’t seen the “Sausage Party” trailer yet, have a gander. But one still gets the sense that bringing that attitude into the structure of Toy Story, with the backing of a major studio, is somewhat groundbreaking.
If you see Sausage Party, be prepared to laugh a lot and cringe at least at little.
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Just be sure that you don’t mistake this film for a family movie.
