It’s not hard to imagine how Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg came up with the premise for their new animated comedy Sausage Party. I see them stoned at the supermarket at 2am, slouching along behind matching shopping carts, when one of them suddenly twigs: “Dude, the whole universe is here in this supermarket!”
Sausage Party’s premise is so simple it just gives and gives, finding new ideas and potent metaphors in every aisle. The products in the market have names, feelings, hopes and fears, ideas and big plans. The hotdogs are all stoney dude-bros hanging out fractiously in their plastic packaging, flirting with the buns on the same shelf. Over in the bread aisle, the bagel and the lavash play out never-ending feuds in a baked-goods version of the Gaza Strip. And the villain of the piece is the super-grouchy vaginal douche (played by Nick Kroll, Parks & Rec’s offensive drive-time DJ “The Douche”).
They yearn for the day when they’ll be purchased and taken into the Great Beyond, the world outside the sliding doors. The big 4 July sale is coming up, and that usually clears the shelves, especially when it comes to hotdogs such as Frank (Rogen) and his main bun-gal Brenda (Kristen Wiig). But one day a pot of honey mustard is returned (dented) with a horrifying tale of friends being skinned, minced, boiled and eaten. Here’s where we get all R-rated: these scenes – carrots being brutally ground up in the human maw, etc – may strongly remind you of Italian cannibal movies, or that time you boozily figured out that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre can be read as a militant vegetarian tract. And then the products finally declare war on… us, the monstrous human race.
As a satire of Pixar’s upbeat worldview, this is pretty dark stuff, and the movie’s all the better for it. And it’s pretty raunchy from the get-go, with the C-word – which in the US is still on the long arc from unsayable taboo to cautious usage among consenting, still slightly shame-faced adults – making its debut in, ooh, line five of the dialogue, and from the mouth of Rogen, naturally. It’s the first CGI animated movie I know of to feature someone shooting up, or to climax – literally – with a gigantic sex-orgy of the groceries, involving every last eye-popping vegi-sex perversion your mind can conjure up.
And yet, behind the blizzard of obscenities there is that same core of sweetness and kindness that’s characteristic of Rogen and Goldberg’s work, while its willingness to visit dark and disturbing places suggests a new maturity and philosophical depth. Still, best to leave the kids at home for this one.
