Sausage Party

From Okay Movies Wiki
‎ ‎‎ ‎
Warning! This article is NSFW!

This article may contain content unsuitable for readers under eighteen years or older.‎
Reader discretion is advised.

Sausage Party
'"Oh, Did you think The Emoji Movie was worse, think again at this atrocity"'
Genre: Comedy
Adventure
Directed By: Conrad Vernon
Greg Tiernan
Written By: Seth Rogen
Evan Goldberg
Starring: Seth Rogen
Kristen Wiig
Jonah Hill
Michael Cera
James Franco
Salma Hayek
Nick Kroll
Danny McBride
Edward Norton
David Krumholtz
Bill Hader
Paul Rudd
Craig Robinson
Distributed By: Columbia Pictures
Annapurna Pictures
Point Grey Pictures
Release Date: 12 August 2016
Runtime: 88 minutes
Country: United States
Canada
Language: English
Budget: $19 million
Box Office: $140.7 million


Sausage Party is a 2016 adult computer-animated comedy film directed by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan and written by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg from a story by Rogen, Goldberg, and Jonah Hill. It stars the voices of Rogen (in a dual role), Kristen Wiig, Hill, Bill Hader (in a triple role), Michael Cera, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton, and Salma Hayek.

The film follows an anthropomorphic sausage who lives in a supermarket and discovers the truth about what happens when groceries are purchased leading him on a journey with his friends to escape their fate while also facing a lunatic and malicious douche who wants to kill him.

The film's animation was provided by Nitrogen Studios. It is the first computer-animated movie to be rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The film's rough cut premiered on March 14, 2016, at South by Southwest, followed by its general theatrical release in the United States on August 12, 2016, by Sony and Columbia Pictures.

The movie received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its animation, story, voice acting and humor, though its heavy use of profanity received some criticism. It grossed $141 million against a budget of $19 million, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated animated film at the time until it was surpassed by Demon Slayer: Mugen Train in 2020.

A TV series based on the film called Sausage Party: Foodtopia is set to be released in 2024.

Plot:

Unbeknownst to humans, a supermarket called Shopwell's is filled with anthropomorphic grocery items that believe that the human shoppers are gods who take purchased groceries to a utopia known as the "Great Beyond". Among the store's groceries is a sausage named Frank, who dreams of living in the Great Beyond with his hot dog bun girlfriend Brenda and his friends Carl and Barry.

One day, Frank and Brenda's packages are purchased by a female shopper. On their way out of the store, a returned jar of honey mustard tries to warn the groceries that the Great Beyond is not what it is said to be, but nobody listens except Frank. Before committing suicide by falling onto the shop floor, Honey Mustard tells Frank to seek out a bottle of liquor named Firewater.

Honey Mustard's suicide creates an accidental cart collision that causes Frank, Brenda, and several groceries to fall out of the cart, including a Jewish bagel named Sammy Bagel Jr., a Middle-Eastern lavash named Kareem Abdul Lavash, and a nasty and aggressive douche who swears revenge on Frank and Brenda after his nozzle is bent on impact.

Seeking to verify Honey Mustard's warning, Frank leads Brenda, Sammy, and Lavash to the store's liquor aisle. There, he meets Firewater and learns that Firewater and his colleagues, the Non-Perishables, created the white lie of the Great Beyond to assuage the inhabitants' fear of being eaten. Frank vows to reveal the truth and is encouraged to travel beyond the store's freezer section to find proof while Brenda, Sammy and Lavash are brought to the Mexican food aisle by a bottle of tequila, who is secretly working for Douche, until a lesbian hard taco named Teresa del Taco, who develops a crush on Brenda, helps them escape Douche.

Meanwhile at the shopper's house, Carl and Barry are horrified to see the shopper cook all of the foods. Carl spots a nearby open window, but is killed from being stabbed and sliced upwards by the shopper behind, leaving Barry to escape alone.

Barry then encounters a human drug addict, who becomes able to communicate with his groceries, one of them being Gum, a Stephen Hawking-like wad of chewing gum, after injecting himself with bath salts. However, the bath salts soon wear off and the addict prepares to cook Barry. The addict accidentally burns himself and Barry yanks his shoelaces, making him slip and causing an axe to fall and decapitate him.

Frank's friends disapprove of his skepticism of the Great Beyond. He discovers a cookbook beyond the freezer section and reveals its contents to the store's inhabitants. They panic at first, but then shortly refuse to believe Frank until Barry, Gum, and the other groceries from the addict's home return with the addict's severed head, proving that the humans can be killed.

The group drugs the human shoppers and employees with toothpicks laced with bath salts, whereupon an epic battle begins. Several humans are gruesomely killed by the groceries while Douche takes control of the store manager Darren. He confronts Frank about becoming a god now that he is in control of Darren and takes a bite out of Frank's torso. Brenda saves Frank as Barry and the other groceries catch Douche and Darren in a garbage pail strapped to propane tanks. They are then launched out of the store as the tanks explode, killing them both. The inhabitants celebrate their victory with a massive orgy.

Later, Frank and his friends visit Firewater, who had a psychedelic experience and discovered that their world is not what they think; they are merely animated characters voiced by famous actors in another dimension. Gum has constructed a portal to this dimension, and the group decide to travel there to confront their creators.

Why It Should’ve Been Eaten:

  1. The main issue with this movie is that most of the plot and writing comes off poorly written with a unoriginal storyline and faulty premise that stole elements from a good number of other previous movies, most notably Toy Story.
  2. Most characters are downright boring, moronic, and sometimes unlikable where it’s portrayed in a bad light:
    • Frank, while likable, is somewhat of a weak protagonist.
    • Brenda, Sammy Bagel Jr, and Kareem Abdul Lavash are pointless secondary characters.
    • Douche is a bland and boring antagonist who just wants revenge on Frank and Brenda all because his nozzle was bent, and he swears way too much!
    • The human characters are portrayed as useless filler and they add nothing to the plot.
  3. There are plenty of horrible, infamous, nasty, and straight-up cringeworthy scenes, especially the kitchen massacre scene:
    • The infamous scene where Barry shows Druggie’s severed head to Frank. We’re not kidding.
    • The infamous scene where Douche drinks from a juice box's crotch area, which resembles rape!
    • The extremely infamous orgy scene at the end.
  4. False advertising for three reasons:
    • While characters like Carl, Darren, Douche, Druggie and Honey Mustard and appeared in other posters and had their character posters, they did not have a lot of screen time.
    • Despite some covers saying it being a “parody” of Pixar, it feels more connected to Sony Pictures Animation.
    • Even the Blu Ray back cover claims it as “The best animated movie of the year” when it’s really not.
  5. It can be offensive at times, especially with the Jewish and Middle Easterners.
  6. There is product placement as usual, such as the ones for Mentos, Pop Tarts, Nutella, and Coca-Cola.
  7. Intense, and we mean an INTENSE overuse of profanity, especially the F-word, similar to another bad Point Grey Pictures film, This would technically make South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut look more tame in comparison.
  8. While the animation is good and not bad at all, it can look uncanny at times, thus there are a couple of animation errors at times, mainly because the animation was provided by Nitrogen Studios.
  9. Lackluster and uncanny character designs, especially Brenda's. Not to mention, some of them look like carbon copies as well.
    • Also, the human designs look like they were taken from Fanboy and Chum Chum, while the food designs look like they were reused from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
  10. Stunt casting: Although Bill Hader does a decent performance as Firewater, his character has very little screen time in the movie and doesn’t have a huge role whatsoever, therefore making Hader a miscast instead.
  11. The climax was not just a poorly done mess, but was way too intense and abhorrent to watch.
  12. Similar to the problems that South Park and Happy Tree Friends had, this movie could easily be mistaken for a kid's movie due to the fact that it was made in CGI, which is what lead to one miscreening of the movie's trailer in one California theater during a premiere of Finding Dory.
  13. This movie has easily some of the worst pacing compared to any adult animated movie, as some scenes tend to drag on forever or end a little bit early giving the it very little time to rest, albeit running at 88 minutes runtime, the pacing feels a lot more like 55 minutes runtime, due to the atrocious pacing and overall lack of focus of the plot in general.
  14. In a similar manner to how other awful animated movies such as Shrek the Third, Cars 2, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Ice Age: Collision Course, The Boss Baby: Family Business, The Emoji Movie, and Hotel Transylvania 4 negatively affected their franchises or studios, this movie horribly damaged the reputation of both Annapurna Pictures, Point Grey Pictures, and Columbia Pictures. As solidified the three’s reputation as studios that was unable to let go of the movie due to how much money made after release. And this resulted in the company as a whole becoming widely unable to be taken seriously as studios by a large number of people (as great as the studio truly was despite a large amount of money they made).
    • Thankfully, Annapurna Pictures was saved by Nimona, which was way more better than this one.

Good Qualities:

  1. The animation, even for 2016 standards, looks surprisingly good (with the sole exception of the character designs).
  2. The voice acting is pretty decent.
  3. Decent direction by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan.
  4. There are a few funny scenes every now and then, such as the injured juice box scene.
  5. Good soundtrack by Alan Menken and Christopher Lennertz.
  6. The first half of the movie was good, until we got to the kitchen massacre scene.
  7. EXTERMINATE THE JUICE!

Reception:

Despite receiving positive feedback from critics, Sausage Party did meet some mixed to negative audience reviews, On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has an approval rating of 82% based on 239 reviews, with an average rating of 6.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Sausage Party is definitely offensive, but backs up its enthusiastic profanity with an impressively high laugh-to-gag ratio -- and a surprisingly thought-provoking storyline." with a audience score of 50%.

The film has a score of 66 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

OMW rated the movie a 38% based on 398 reviews, The site's critical consensus reads “Sausage Party is such a predictable and bland tale that it'll appeal mostly to moviegoers; while others are seeking something in Pixar's league are looking, but in the wrong supermarket.”

Chicken Zeke hated the movie as he ranked it a “F” saying “I didn’t like the movie, it should have been competed for Raspberry Worst Picture instead, but it is not as bad as Ralph Breaks the Internet and The Emoji Movie.

The Mysterious Mr. Enter gave the film an “F-“, saying “I thought this was the worst movie Columbia Pictures made, but it wasn’t until 6 years later when they made Hotel Transylvania 4 and turned their beloved Halloween franchise into a generic Ice Age 6 rehash.

Saru91 gave the film an “F-“ saying, “A very ridiculous R-rated CGI animated movie, which is basically just like other bad Columbia Pictures movies.

Trivia:

  • Because of it's animated nature, Some people thought it to be a "PG rated movie" but was not, allegedly, there was some controversy about this when a trailer of the movie was accidentally advertised in a Brenden theater in Concord, California during a release of Finding Dory.
  • Danny McBride, Michael Cera, Seth Rogen, and Craig Robinson would later star in yet another Sony Pictures distributed adult animated project together, Urban Jungle, as Marcel, Jared, Marshawn, and Moloch respectively.
  • Both Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon will later directed The Addams Family and its 2021 sequel.

External Links

Comments

Loading comments...