Sausage Party (Blu-ray Review)

11 Nov, 2016 By: John Latchem

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Sony Pictures
Animated Comedy
Box Office $97.67 million
$26.99 DVD, $34.99 Blu-ray, $45.99 UHD BD
Rated ‘R’ for strong crude sexual content, pervasive language, and drug use
Voices of Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton, Salma Hayek.

Seth Rogen and his filmmaking buddies have delivered a raunchy send-up of the Pixar formula that crosses every line it can.

The concept is basically Toy Story in a grocery store.

Here’s just a sampling of what you’ll see in this movie:

• The main characters are a hot dog and bun who exist as metaphors for sex (the bun is also lusted after by a lesbian taco);

• The villain is literally a douche.

• The plot turns on a tweaker who gets so high shooting up he can actually communicate with the food

• When the store closes, the food products jump out of their packages and engage in a giant orgy

The food believe in a religion that convinces them that leaving the store with a shopper takes them to a utopia. A bottle of mustard gets returned and starts to spread rumors of the horrors of the outside world, causing a disturbance in the cart that leaves several of the main characters falling on the floor and spending the rest of the movie trying to find their way back to their home aisles when the store closes. They end up passing through several sections of the store themed around ethnic foods to look like their home countries, such as a cantina for Mexican food. The liquor aisle is a nightclub.

That’s a clever touch, but the biggest laughs come from the perspective of the food once they get to the home of the customer, who prepares dinner by horribly murdering them in the most painful ways possible.

If Seth Rogen comedies or adult-oriented animation are your thing, then this movie should appeal greatly to you. It doesn’t reach the highs that South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut once did aiming for the same audience, but it’s a howler nonetheless.

The Blu-ray is stocked with some additional behind-the-scenes comedy, starting with a seven-and-a-half-minute “Good Food Gag Reel.”

The history of the production is recounted in the five-minute “Shock and Awe: How Did This Get Made?”

The nine-and-a-half-minute “The Booth” focuses on interactions between the voice cast while recording dialogue, while “Line-O-Rama” offers five-minutes of alternate takes.

The four-minute “The Great Beyond” delves into the movie’s music, one of the creators of which is Disney veteran Alan Menken.

“The Art of the Pitch” is a two-and-a-half clip of Rogen and writing partner Evan Goldberg discussing their careers and how they pitched bizarre ideas to the studio.

The final bit is “Seth Rogen’s Animation-Imaginatorium,” a minute-long old-timey introduction of sorts to the movie with Rogen as a vindictive Walt Disney-type firing his animators when they displease him. This one raises a bit of an eyebrow considering the rumored controversies about the film’s actual animators being underpaid.

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