Sausage Party

SPOILER-FREE MOVIE REVIEW

Where do I begin.

Sausage Party is a new mature animated comedy which features all the different kinds of food you'll find in the supermarket as living and breathing characters.

These different kinds of food live in harmony in the supermarket, with a goal of being "chosen" by shoppers whom they worship as gods and finally going into the "Great Beyond" which is outside the supermarket.

With that premise, I was really intrigued, and I was really interested in finding out what this movie was all about.

Having seen it, however, I can only describe it with one expression - "meh".

Yes, the premise is interesting and the whole idea of food coming to life is pretty fresh despite the trend this year of similar animated movies like The Secret Life of Pets and Zootopia (also called Zootropolis here in the UK), just to name a few.

However, the problem with Sausage Party is that it just lacks a certain oomph, which we shall delve deeper into now.

The movie starts off on a very positive note, with a very funny musical number and a series of hilarious jokes and "food imagery" innuendoes which leaves plenty for the imagination.

After a while, however, jokes become incredibly repetitive and sort of become "unfunny", like Melissa McCarthy in everything she's in.

It's a shame because we've seen this kind of outrageous comedy brought into animation done very well before. A good example is with Ted, which was brilliant and really entertaining. Sure, Ted isn't an animated film per se, but it's a similar type of comedy and it's a freaking CGI bear so you get my point.

It's also a pity because of the social issues and themes which Sausage Party deals with and talks about, and at times even parodies are all very interesting and very relevant.

It's sort of what Zootopia did in terms of providing social commentary through imagery and symbolism, just that Sausage Party doesn't hold back on anything and it's just as savage as it wants to be, and for that, I really appreciated and enjoyed it.

These good bits were kind of wasted by the repetitive jokes and some instances of just really poor toilet-class humour. Sorry to those that like comedy like this, because I'm really not one of them. Humour like that often works better in live action films like This Is The End (made by and starring a very similar cast), although I didn't quite like that one either.

The voice acting and animation is all pretty good, as you'd come to expect from a mainstream movie nowadays. I find it rare to see a film with poor production value these days, like even the horrid Ghostbusters remake wasn't a train wreck in terms of production value.

In terms of how far the movie pushes in terms of boundaries and limits regarding touchy subjects, it's all down to how much an individual in the audience can take. For me, I'm a very open person and find it easy to laugh at anything, as offensive as the joke may be.

At the screening I was at, however, I heard barely any laughter from the few others who were in the same hall as I was. Sure, there were a few chuckles here and there but there weren't any major "laugh-out-loud" moments that I could recall.

There were also scenes which could be, to an extent, uncomfortable to watch for some due to suggestive graphic imagery which to me, was funny to a point, but got so excessive and cringeworthy after a while that it took me out of the movie for a bit.

Kind of a statement for the film as a while, actually - interesting initially, but ruined by overdoing it too much. In other words, "meh".

All in all, Sausage Party was a lacklustre albeit interesting attempt at making a mature animated comedy.

Sure, this set of comedians who were behind this project are all funny people and can work together very well, but there's a limit to everything, and I think we've seen enough of these folks for now. Kind of getting sick of Seth Rogen especially.

It was funny to a certain extent, but more often than not, the jokes fall flat and become repetitive. I nearly fell asleep towards the halfway point, and I never fall asleep during movies!

Opportunity wasted, perhaps.

Meh.

5/10.