Sausage Party
The trailer for Sausage Party was one of those advertisements which shall define a good part of the internet landscape when we look back on 2016, or at least the happy internet. It’s a clever trailer, even though it actually does what internet sketch videos have been doing for ages. The only difference being these guys actually MADE F-D Up Toy Story!
Sausage Party runs under the premise that all food items are sentient and anthropomorphic. In a Supermarket, food lives under the assumption that people take it home to “The Great Beyond”. In actuality, of course, we eat them! What follows is a raunchy, gory, sexually perverse comedy from the eyes of produce.
How does the bun speak? Where are the arms of the sausage coming from? How does the Bagel breathe? And why is the pancake thing sporting a beard?
The most fascinating thing I find about Sausage Party now that I’ve seen it is that this well-written, clever comedy has all its best humour in the lowest common denominator kind of humour. I’ve seen some pretty screwed up stuff in movies, but this might have the most hard-to-watch imagery I’ve seen in a long time. And somehow it works and is hilarious.
This is this year’s The Lego Movie. An animated film which looks so one-note and low-brow upon initial inspection but through sheer force of will, translates the extremes of its vision into a smart, dumb comedy.
Smart dumb comedy is a bizarre phenomenon when it is only through lowering the bar to which humour can aspire and sticking with it so hard with such intelligence that something awesome comes out.
As with a lot of Seth Rogen’s comedies, the crux of the clever satire wise on religion. The theological statements presented by Sausage Party (boy is that sensors you don’t hear every day) are not the most subtle or layered. There are also not the most well founded as some of the allegories just don’t work with the modern world, but upon reflection there are two things which make this film sat out a cut above others of its kind.
For one, is incorporated into the narrative rather well when the main sausage shout about God not being real (God in their world being the people buying them) it works, since his lack of subtlety matches the movie’s lack. Look at the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost film Paul also co-starring Seth Rogen. Without film went into anti-religion mode it felt out of place and mean.
Secondly, the movie presents rationalism not atheism. There is nothing wrong with promotion of atheism when using rationalism, but at times filmmakers become like the way Bob Dylan saw his past self in as masterwork My Back Pages, immature lay screaming about things they don’t fully understand.
This review might seem a little serious for a film with Edward Norton playing a Woody Allen style bisexual bagel, but you know what, f**k it!
Recommended Scenario: Anyone can see this film as long as you’re an adult and appreciated dumb genius. But the watch with your kids or your mum.
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