Uproarious animated farce leaves you hungry for more
SAUSAGE PARTY (15)
THERE’S plentiful food for thought in Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan’s uproarious and potty-mouthed computer-animated comedy set in a supermarket where cute anthropomorphised perishables dream of a ‘great beyond’ past the sliding front doors.
From the opening line, f- and c-bombs garnish dialogue as nouns, verbs and adverbs with a furious abandon usually reserved for Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee.
It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of filth and unabashed raunchiness including a full-blown baked goods and vegetables orgy in lurid close-up that ensures you will never look at a basket of groceries the same way.
If the script was merely obscenities, we would have our fill of Sausage Party after the first bulging mouthful.
Thankfully, beneath the vulgarity lurks a tangy satire of consumer greed and cultural, racial, sociopolitical and gender stereotypes that will have you smacking your lips with glee.
So while a Middle Eastern flatbread (David Krumholtz) debates territorial encroachments with a Jewish bagel (voiced by Edward Norton), a goose-stepping Sauerkraut vows to ‘exterminate the juice’ and a Sapphic taco encourages a sexually repressed bread roll to expand her erotic horizons.
At Shopwell’s supermarket, the food that festoons the aisles begins each day with a rousing song in the hope that one of the customers – ‘ the gods’ – will spirit them into dazzling white light beyond the checkouts.
Among these optimists is a sausage, Frank (Seth Rogen), who is desperate to slip between the soft and inviting bun halves of his finger roll girlfriend, Brenda (Kristen Wiig).
‘I just don’t know why you’re limiting yourself to one bun,’ despairs fellow hot dog Carl (Jonah Hill). ‘I’m a bunogamist,’ proudly retorts Frank.
When a jar of shell-shocked Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) is returned to Shopwell’s unopened, Frank, Brenda and chums discover the so-called gods are monsters, who – gulp. – consume unsuspecting foodstuffs.
Firewater (Bill Hader) and his non-perishable cohorts Mr Grits (Craig Robinson) and Twink (Scott Underwood) in the alcohol aisle confirm the nightmarish truth.
While Frank sparks a supermarket revolution, taco Teresa (Salma Hayek) makes lusty overtures to Brenda and feminine hygiene product Douche (Nick Kroll) embarks on a murderous rampage.
Sausage Party is exceedingly naughty, but nice. The ramshackle plot incorporates myriad cinematic influences including a shopping trolley collision that unfolds like a scene of carnage from Saving Private Ryan and kitchen preparations that resemble a slasher horror.
Endless profanities do become wearisome and a post-modern final flourish doesn’t quite work.
However, verbal and visual gags land at a breathless pace including a protracted interlude with a stunted sausage (Michael Cera), who convinces himself that girth is more important than length, and a packaged meatloaf singing I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That).
At a bitesize 89 minutes, Vernon and Tiernan’s film leaves us hungry for more. RATING: 7/10