Food porn

Animated 'Sausage Party' is adults-only

The history of R-rated animated films is a pretty short one, unless you’re from Japan. Setting aside “Anomalisa,” which explored dark thematic territory, and past exceptions like “Fritz the Cat” and “Heavy Metal,” which were aimed at the stoner midnight movie crowd, animated movies typically reside in the safe PG realm. “Sausage Party” the new animated comedy from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, is another exception, and one I’m positive was conceived of while the two writers were getting epically baked. 

Frank (Seth Rogen) is a sentient hot dog wrapped in a package with his friends, Carl, Barry and Troy (Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and Anders Holm). He’s desperately horny for Brenda (Kristen Wiig), a hot dog bun similarly encased with her brethren. They live in a supermarket with other sentient groceries, each preoccupied with being purchased by humans—whom they consider gods—and taken to an idyllic life in the Great Beyond. 

But that utopian vision of life after the supermarket is disrupted when a mistakenly purchased bottle of honey mustard (Danny McBride) is returned to the grocery store and hysterically informs his fellow foodstuffs that what lies outside the automatic doors is not Paradise, but instead a realm of unimaginable suffering and death.

With their faith shaken like a bottle of Yoo-hoo, Frank and Brenda manage to escape the cart with Douche (Nick Kroll), a literal douche who blames Frank and Brenda for wrecking his nozzle and thwarting his trip into a vagina. He’s bent on getting some pay back. 

Frank becomes obsessed with discovering the meaning of existence and leading his people to salvation after he gets high with the immortal Imperishables: Firewater, Mr. Grits, and Twink (Bill Hader, Craig Robinson, and Scott Underwood). They hold the secret to the truth, kind of like Gnostic potheads. Brenda still wants to toe the proverbial line and get to the afterlife. Despite their differing goals, they must work together to make it back to their aisle while managing to avoid Douche’s vengeance.

Between the low-brow sex gags (of which there are many) and drug-induced plot mechanics, “Sausage Party” manages to introduce an often-clever social allegory about race and religion.

Many characters are performed as their ethnicities. Firewater and Mr. Grits are Native American and black. They share a mutual hatred for the Crackers who forced them from their aisle. Sammy Bagel Jr. and Lavash (Edward Norton and David Krumholtz) are a Jew and a Muslim, who are predictably racist to one another until they learn to work together. Teresa (Salma Hayek) is a lesbian taco shell with an unrequited crush on Brenda. 

It mostly works, though I cringed at hearing a bottle of soy sauce voiced in a stereotypical Asian accent, like Mickey Rooney in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Writers Rogen and Goldberg (with Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir) manage to score some sly laughs, playfully satirizing a variety of cultural issues, like racism and gay acceptance, the uncritical piety of conservative true believers, and the arrogance of orthodox liberal atheists. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict, bullying, body dysmorphia, drug addiction, and segregation are among the many weightier themes with which “Sausage Party” is largely preoccupied. At least, until the climactic “Caligula”-inspired orgy. Can’t say I saw that coming.

Consistently amusing, “Sausage Party” still winds up being more clever than laugh-out-loud funny. It’s an inherently sweet-natured, thoughtful film, despite its gleeful raunchiness. 

For more from Joe, read his review of Netflix's "The Little Prince."