Sausage Party

Dir: Conrad Vernon, Greg Tiernan

2016

**

Conceived by childhood friends Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and frequent collaborator Jonah Hill, 2016's Sausage Party may well represent the start of the team's regression. I loved 2013's This Is The End, I'd read an interview with Rogen about how he was devastated when he first saw Shaun of the Dead because he hadn't thought of it first but I thought he and his comedy entourage had made something brilliant, completely original that only they could do, which kind of made up for that. I was quite excited for their next venture, a raucous send up of the Pixar movies featuring food that doesn't know it's going to be eaten, Pixar could do with being brought down a peg or two and the clever premise was full of potential. However, what they have produced is totally uncreative, rather messy and nowhere near as good as the films it spoofs. The film's main characters are Seth Rogan's sausage called Frank and Kristen Wiig's Brenda Bunson, a hot dog bun and Frank's would be love interest. The message is loud and clear, Frank the sausage and Brenda the hot dog bun are made for each other, Frank is the phallus and Brenda is the....whatever the opposite of phallus is, their union is a euphemism for sex, crude but funny if done right, except it isn't. Now there is a place for crude humour, I don't dislike it but it really only works well when you don't expect it and it is limited. Crude should be used when euphemisms and the art of double entendre is exhausted. Here, we expect crude, we get crude and it's really nothing special and it gets tired quite quickly. Sausage Party is far too obvious. It explores some very clever ideas, particularly on belief, faith and religion, how society works (and doesn't work) and how opinion, ideology and sociology work. Unfortunately it does this while using stereotype and is pretty racist, homophobic and prejudiced. When the comedy is this low however, I'm pretty sure no one will be too insulted but it does beg the question why? Again? I noticed quite a few of the jokes had been seen before, there is a hummus joke in the film that involves a Jewish Bagal and a middle eastern Lavash that is straight out of an Ali G sketch I remember seeing - fair enough, both Rogan and Goldberg wrote for the Ali G show, it could have been their joke, but come on guys, how about writing something new? Pixar is fair game but towards the middle and end of the film Sausage Party adopts the same structure they are going some way to ridicule. One wonders if directors Vernon and Tiernan are burning a few bridges here, although both men are responsible for some of the worst modern animations in recent years. I dislike Sausage Party more than perhaps I should because it is the sort of film I've been wanting for a very long time and they wasted pretty much every idea the concept threw up. It doesn't help that I'm still not sure what a douche is either. I'm no prude, I'm not offended by any of it, I just think these guys are funnier than this, more creative than this and more intelligent. I like the idea that the film was conceived under the influence, many masterpieces were, but I don't think you should have to be high as a kite in order to enjoy it. When I went to see it a large group of young people were turned away by the ticket seller for being too young to see it, which is ironic as they were probably the only people who are likely to enjoy it, the 15+ year olds who were in the same cinema as me certainly didn't and strangely they all knew what to expect. The joke is well past it's sell by date.