Let me start off this review by saying I like Seth Rogen. I like low-brow, shock humor. I love biting satire. By all metrics, I should've been the target audience for this film. But I couldn't remember the last time a movie actually made me as angry as I felt watching Sausage Party.
Look, I *get* what this movie was trying to do. Really, I do. Its admirable ambition is the ONLY reason I give it a 3/10 and not a 1. But it fails in every place it was trying to succeed. Let me explain.
1. It fails as a send-up of saccharine Pixar animated films. Parody really is an art form of its own. To do it well, the medium needs to look and feel - at first blush - like something sincere, which allows the artist to invert expectations of the audience (thus, humor). Just look at the best satire: The Onion takes on the tone of a daily newspaper; Young Frankenstein feels like a classic horror film; Weird Al Yankovic sounds like the musicians he parodies. Parody requires a nuanced and keen understanding of whatever source material it's sending-up.
Sausage Party seems to think it's a Pixar parody because it a) uses inanimate objects as characters, and b) is animated. But that's not what makes Pixar movies Pixar movies. They have emotion, they have clever characters, and they make unexpected and subtle observations on humanity.
The closest Sausage Party came to giving us Pixar-inspired characters were the queer taco and the Stephen Hawking-esque piece of chewed up gum, and neither is on screen long enough to carry the film. The rest of the "parody" is dependent on the fact that animation as a medium is most commonly used for children's entertainment, and Sausage Party clearly isn't for children. If that's parody, then it's parody in its laziest, most artificial form.
2. It fails as shock humor. I get that this is subjective and everyone has their own meter for "what is shocking," but I'm going to go out on a limb and say no one over the age of 11 thinks cartoon characters being vulgar is shocking. South Park busted down that barrier two decades ago. Adult Swim has been around for almost as long. In a world of Borat, 4chan, and There's Something About Mary, if you want to go for pure shock laughs, you need a lot more than f-bombs and sex puns.
That being said, for shock humor to actually be *shocking* it needs to come as a surprise. If the entire film beats you over the head with profanity, drug references, and wiener jokes, then by definition you can't be surprised. It becomes tedium.
3. It fails as commentary on organized religion. This was probably the most disappointing failure because the idea that humans are gods over food and food has to tell themselves the gods are bringing them to a "great beyond" to give their lives meaning is indeed a clever concept. There was an opportunity for Rogen n Co to make an anti-Veggie Tales that could've been something sharp and brilliant. They blew it.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker did the anti-belief message beautifully in The Book of Mormon. In it, the characters grow to question their faith, and their new-found skepticism pays off with a unique and clever spin at the end (with lots of smart laughs along the way).
In Sausage Party, on the other hand, instead of using religious skepticism as a vehicle for character development, it was more the bow that tied a bunch of juvenile jokes to some pseudo-intelligent theme. There was no organic transformation. It was a forced conclusion to justify ending on an orgy (because ultimately nothing really matters and all we have is joy and pleasure in this life yadda yadda ya get it?! GET IT?!?)
The fact Sausage Party had such potential makes the results all the more annoying. In more skilled hands it really could've been a fun, acerbic send-up of Pixar AND religion. Instead, what we have is an over-long, single-joke animated SNL skit with all the charm and brilliance of a jackhammer. Awful.
Look, I *get* what this movie was trying to do. Really, I do. Its admirable ambition is the ONLY reason I give it a 3/10 and not a 1. But it fails in every place it was trying to succeed. Let me explain.
1. It fails as a send-up of saccharine Pixar animated films. Parody really is an art form of its own. To do it well, the medium needs to look and feel - at first blush - like something sincere, which allows the artist to invert expectations of the audience (thus, humor). Just look at the best satire: The Onion takes on the tone of a daily newspaper; Young Frankenstein feels like a classic horror film; Weird Al Yankovic sounds like the musicians he parodies. Parody requires a nuanced and keen understanding of whatever source material it's sending-up.
Sausage Party seems to think it's a Pixar parody because it a) uses inanimate objects as characters, and b) is animated. But that's not what makes Pixar movies Pixar movies. They have emotion, they have clever characters, and they make unexpected and subtle observations on humanity.
The closest Sausage Party came to giving us Pixar-inspired characters were the queer taco and the Stephen Hawking-esque piece of chewed up gum, and neither is on screen long enough to carry the film. The rest of the "parody" is dependent on the fact that animation as a medium is most commonly used for children's entertainment, and Sausage Party clearly isn't for children. If that's parody, then it's parody in its laziest, most artificial form.
2. It fails as shock humor. I get that this is subjective and everyone has their own meter for "what is shocking," but I'm going to go out on a limb and say no one over the age of 11 thinks cartoon characters being vulgar is shocking. South Park busted down that barrier two decades ago. Adult Swim has been around for almost as long. In a world of Borat, 4chan, and There's Something About Mary, if you want to go for pure shock laughs, you need a lot more than f-bombs and sex puns.
That being said, for shock humor to actually be *shocking* it needs to come as a surprise. If the entire film beats you over the head with profanity, drug references, and wiener jokes, then by definition you can't be surprised. It becomes tedium.
3. It fails as commentary on organized religion. This was probably the most disappointing failure because the idea that humans are gods over food and food has to tell themselves the gods are bringing them to a "great beyond" to give their lives meaning is indeed a clever concept. There was an opportunity for Rogen n Co to make an anti-Veggie Tales that could've been something sharp and brilliant. They blew it.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker did the anti-belief message beautifully in The Book of Mormon. In it, the characters grow to question their faith, and their new-found skepticism pays off with a unique and clever spin at the end (with lots of smart laughs along the way).
In Sausage Party, on the other hand, instead of using religious skepticism as a vehicle for character development, it was more the bow that tied a bunch of juvenile jokes to some pseudo-intelligent theme. There was no organic transformation. It was a forced conclusion to justify ending on an orgy (because ultimately nothing really matters and all we have is joy and pleasure in this life yadda yadda ya get it?! GET IT?!?)
The fact Sausage Party had such potential makes the results all the more annoying. In more skilled hands it really could've been a fun, acerbic send-up of Pixar AND religion. Instead, what we have is an over-long, single-joke animated SNL skit with all the charm and brilliance of a jackhammer. Awful.