Film Review: "Sausage Party" (2016).

One of the film's tagline reads "Not your usual kids movie", which is exactly what Sausage Party is. This adult computer-animated comedy film directed by Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon, and written by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg. A parody of Disney and Pixar animated films, the film follows a sausage who tries to discover the truth about his existence and goes on a journey with his friends to escape their fate. After South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999), the film is the first CGI-animated film to be rated R by the MPAA.

Seth Rogen first developed the idea of the film back in 2007. It was based on something he and Jonah Hill joked around about. While promoting Superbad (2007) and Knocked Up (2007), people would ask Rogen what his next project will be, in which he jokingly replied "It's called 'Sausage Party'". Rogen later described the film as a dark take on Disney films, saying, "People like to project their emotions onto the things around them: their toys, their cars, their pets... So we thought, 'What would it be like if our food had feelings?' We very quickly realized that it would be fucked up." It's because of the dark nature of the story, Rogen worked and fought for eight years to get it picked up by film studios. Until it was finally formally announced in September 2013 as a joint project between Sony Pictures Entertainment, Annapurna Pictures and Point Grey Pictures. The film was finally given the green light with a budget of $20 million, as opposed to most Pixar and other animated movies, this was considered a particularly small budget for a CG animated feature. According to Rogen, the film was intended to be made as inexpensively as possible and the CGI was not supposed to look polished. Like most Rogen-Goldberg films, this film did not come without its controversies. The red band trailer for the film was accidentally shown in a screening of Finding Dory (2016) at Brenden Concord cinemas in Concord, California, horrifying young audiences. The incident occurred only once, and the theater apologized, with Rogen tweeting that the story "made his day".

It stars an ensemble voice cast that includes Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton and Salma Hayek. Like This is the End, the film was jam-packed with energetic, hilarious and surprising performances from the cast.

Its jokes are profoundly bold and rude but incredibly funny at the same time. With Sausage Party, you could sit through a year's worth of Hollywood animated features and still not see anything that's genuinely knock-your-socks-off audacious. But the film truly is. It's the wildest animated feature, since South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, that is not afraid to be the most fearlessly audacious and the snort-out-loud funniest. However, the film ultimately fails short for animated greatness due to its lazy, overly gratuitous and ridiculous last 15 minutes.

Simon says Sausage Party receives: