Film of the Week: Sausage Party

The moment I heard about this film and watched the teaser trailer, my immediate thought was, “What could possibly go wrong?”. I accidentally said that aloud and someone asked me what I meant by that: Either sarcastically or comically or something else, and so I explained the context behind that thought.

An R-rated animated film – which in England would receive the 15 certificate. That hasn’t really been done before as a feature-length film. Most animated projects are either meant only for kids or for the entire family, but never have any animation company attempted to produce one only for adults. And then I discovered who was standing behind the scenes, suddenly the teaser trailer got even better. Seth Rogan’s filmography normally includes certain elements that if weren’t in there, you would wonder whether this really is a film penned by Seth himself. Even the two Bad Neighbours films had those elements in, just to remind you that Seth is in the building, and to include them into an animated film, I couldn’t have been any more interested.

I didn’t want to be, but I found myself caught up in the hype, and so when I was finally able to sit down and watch it, my anticipation for it to be a good film was unintentionally high, but I was pleased that it delivered everything I had hoped for…

And yes, it really isn’t meant for kids. This couldn’t be more of an animation film intended for adults if it tried, and that just made it that much more entertaining. I am struggling to see if it is actually possible to include so many innuendos at any one time, but there was something different about them, though. An innuendo is an innocent comment that suggests a different definition for the entertainment of others, and even in the trailer there were plenty of those and so it was expected that the film would be packed full of innuendos from beginning to end, and none of us was disappointed, but instead of being suggestive, it’s almost as if they were deliberately bending the definition of an innuendo to its breaking point. They say something that everyone knows is completely suggestive, but at the same time it’s sitting at the far opposite and being an innocent comment at the same time. Extremely suggestive, and extremely innocent at the same time, and there was never anything in between. Even the promotional poster stay clears of the middle. I have never known a film to include so many innuendos at any one time and get away with it – and if it were any other film, they would have gotten boring very quickly, but this film remained funny from beginning to end.

During those moments when the imagery was brought to our main attention, they really didn’t pull any punches. Again, it’s food, and so it’s innocent, but on the other hand, it’s incredibly dark. A sausage getting cut up in front of his friend, a potato having its skin sheared off, a cabbage ripped in twain; if there was a limit they wanted to smash through, they certainly achieved that – but because it’s an animated film it was one-hundred percent fictional. Again, always sitting at both extreme ends of the spectrum.

However, it isn’t just innuendos and graphic imagery, it did have a story as well, and I have no complaints on that either, to be honest. Whilst you could argue that it’s a little formulaic when it comes to a character striving to find the meaning of life, but it’s done in such a unique way, the backbone of the story also feels unique and fresh. It didn’t tangent off anywhere unnecessary, it stuck firmly to the story, and developed the characters around it until the climatic showdown between the food and their “Gods” (humans).

While most major animated films require hundreds of millions of pounds, Sausage Party was made with – compared to – pocket change at 20 million pounds. It was deliberately animated as if it needed a little bit more polishing up – or as if they had run out of budget, but decided to just go with what they have instead of waiting for some more, and again, it really works. If it was as perfect as a Pixar film, it would spoil the film as a whole. You could define Sausage Party as the Deadpool of animation: It was a huge experiment, yet everything came together as intended and was perfect.

If they changed one thing about Deadpool, everyone would go crazy. Because they were allowed that freedom to do essentially what they wanted without having to worry about adhering to any ratings, all the elements fell together exactly as intended and the finished product was a hit among fans, and introduced the possibility of even more R-rated comic book films. This falls into the same category. Because there weren’t any ratings to obey by, that creative freedom allowed them to expand and include everything they wanted to make the film they had envisioned and the finished product was and is amazing. The difference between Deadpool and Sausage Party is that Deadpool wasn’t the first R-rated comic book film, just the first good one, whereas Sausage Party wasn’t just the first, but set the bar very high for the future.

So when I asked, “What could possibly go wrong?” I was awash with many different emotions: Excitement because it was a Seth Rogan film, nervous because it was an animated R-rated film, and curious to see how they would actually pull that off. I knew what I meant when I asked that question, but if said aloud it doesn’t really explain anything, does it?

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)