After the buzz around Seth Rogan’s R rated animation in the Summer, I had high hopes based on the trailer that ‘Sausage Party’ would be a funny, clever animation. Unfortunately, its not and despite a decent opening 15 minutes or so that holds some promise, the film quickly devolves into one over-long joke that quickly outstays its welcome. Following the lives of food items in a supermarket, a hotdog called Frank (Seth Rogan) longs to be with his bun soul mate (Kristen Wiig). When they’re both “chosen” by an unaware human as part of a weekly shop, they’re taken away from the supermarket. However, they quickly learn the truth about what really happens to food outside the sanctuary of the supermarket. After escaping, they travel back to the supermarket with the intent of breaking all the food out. At first glance, it seems like the story should be drive enough for a clever use of humour and tongue-in-cheek jokes and to begin with, it does do a good job of this. However, much like a joke told over and over again until its not funny anymore, ‘Sausage Party’ quickly outstays its welcome. It not only breaks its own logic set within the confines of the story in the third act, from which I won’t spoil, but the film constantly feels like a shoulder nudge with someone repeating a crude word in your ear, expecting a reaction. The animation, however, is actually pretty well done and the only saving grace here. The lighting and visuals are good as well and as I mentioned before, the opening act of the film is well done and genuinely feels fresh and funny. However, seven jokes about male and female genitals later, and ‘Sausage Party’ quickly becomes a relentless, tedious grind of the same joke repeated again and again. Without giving too much away, the nail in the coffin for me was the final, incredibly unnecessary scene that left me repulsed rather than humoured. Now, its not to say I’m not a fan of this kind of humour and when done right it can be funny. My biggest issue with this film is its inability to spin different jokes in its 90 minute length. If hearing the same dirty joke again and again sounds appealing to you, this film will be right up your alley. For me, ‘Sausage Party’ lost its humour after the first act and outstayed its welcome well into the latter portion of the film. With a better script woven with thought rather than a teenager’s drunken ramblings, would this have become one of the smarter animations from 2016? Well, there’s food for thought.
