Sausage Party Review: Seth Rogens Pornographic Food Toon Is Hilarious

You leave the fucked-up funhouse of Sausage Party thinking: Did I see this movie or hallucinate it? I mean that as high praise. Seth Rogen, who wrote the script with Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir, has dreamed for years of dishing out an R-rated cartoon treat that would tackle the crisis in the Middle East, the nonexistence of God and the sex lives of supermarket products. He does all that and more here, as well as voicing Frank, a furter who longs to pull out of his prophylactic packaging and slip into a bun named Brenda (Kristen Wiig). Rogen is a live-wire satirist whos probably taken on too much. But you gotta love him for it.

Sausage Party shows us how we are what we eat, drink and buy into. All the products in Rogens market the animation is killer talk four-letter shit but still believe in being purchased and taken to the Great Beyond, a grand illusion the film quickly shatters in scenes of carnage to rival Saving Private Ryan. (If co-directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan had any guidelines youd hardly notice.) I howled at Edward Norton, channeling Woody Allen to voice an argumentative bagel, having it out on territorial imperatives with an Arabic flatbread(David Krumholtz). And Salma Hayek scores as a bi-curious taco with a thing for Brenda. Michael Cera also excels as a mini-sausage who wonders if size matters or is it girth? But its Nick Kroll, cast as a douche, who may push the most buttons. Ah, what the hell. I could go on, but why spoil the mirth and malice? Only a douche would take the kids. Theyd be traumatized.