Bookshelf Battle

“Once you see that shit, it will f%$k you up for life.”

So said the talking twinkie and I gotta be honest, he wasn’t kidding.

If you see this movie, it might very well f%*k you up for life.

But then again, if you saw the trailer and went anyway, you were probably f%&ked up to begin with.

That doesn’t say much about me since I saw the trailer and went to it anyway.

SPOILER ALERT – I can’t really discuss it without spoiling it so, if you’re worried about that, read no further.

BQB here with a review of Seth Rogen’s R rated animated film, Sausage Party.

I’m just gonna throw it out there.

Seth was no doubt smoking some very potent cannabis when he wrote this shit.

I’m an hour out of seeing it myself and I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around it, but let me try.

OK.  So every Pixar animated movie is basically about something or someone that doesn’t usually talk right?

Talking toys in Toy Story. Talking fish in Finding Nemo. Heck, forget Pixar. Pretty much every cartoon features either an inanimate object or an animal that can talk and these films usually revolve around, “Gee whiz, kids, what do these toys, fish, other things that don’t normally talk do when we aren’t paying attention to them?”

So Seth turned that concept into one great big joke by asking, “What if food products talk to each other when we aren’t watching?”

Yup. Like I said. He’s been hitting the hard stuff.

In this time of reboots, sequels, prequels, and sequels to prequels of rebooted reboots, I have to hand it to Seth – this movie was original.

It put a lot of stuff on the screen that my eyes, ears, sensory receptors and brain aren’t used to processing – namely, quality rendered animated characters doing and saying horrible, terrible, disgusting things to each other.

Highlights:

• Food products screaming in terror as they get sliced, diced and chomped.

• Aforementioned food products staging a revolt and murdering humans in gruesome detail.  (Seeing a severed human head in an animated movie is definitely original, but uh…not really sure that was something that I wanted to see.  The twinkie was right. I’m effed up for life now.)

• Zombie corn kernels trapped in poop.  Took me a second to get it but it does make scientific sense if you think about it.

• `Food products act in stereotypical ways based on their country of origin.  Salma Hayek voices a horny taco.  David Krumholtz voices a Middle Eastern lavash (sort of like a soft taco-esque wrap) and Ed Norton voices a Jewish bagel (Sammy Bagel Jr.)  The lavash and bagel trade barbs throughout the film until they become way, way, way too friendly in the end, and boy do I mean the end. Uhh…I mean I’m not very PC but as I watched it I thought, “Wow, the social justice warriors are going to be all over this shit on Twitter.”

• The crux of the film is that Frank the Sausage (Seth Rogen) wants to make sweet love to and live happily ever with Brenda Bunson (Kristen Wiig) a hot dog bun that bears a striking resemblance to a cooter.

• The plot ties heavily into religion, namely, are the food products better off thinking that the humans are taking them out of the grocery store to live nice happy lives?  Would they just go nuts and be unhappy if they knew the truth that they were destined to be eaten? (And thanks Seth, on top of having to watch fornicating produce I really needed a reminder that my hope that there’s life after death is scientifically unsound and that in all likelihood I will end up just as disappointed as those poor, poor food products who ended up gnashed between a pair of giant teeth.)

• A druggie injects himself with bath salts and is able to communicate with the food.  Gotta say, aside from the severed head, a dude dropping a spike in his vein is another subject I never thought that would ever be tackled by a cartoon so uh…I guess Seth broke new ground there but uh…I’m not sure that’s ground that should have been broken?  (Kids, please don’t try that at home…or anyone else…to quote South Park’s Mr. Mackey, “Drugs are bad, mmm’kay?”)

• Nick Kroll lends his voice to a douche that, naturally, acts like a douche.  IMO, the douchey douche was one of the funnier parts of the movie.

• And finally, the orgy.  The terrible, horrible, monstrous orgy.  Food products having hardcore sex with each other to celebrate their victory over the humans.  I…I don’t even know what to say.  I get they were animated food products and all but it was still so graphic that it left me wondering how this movie didn’t get an NC-17 rating slapped on it.

Hmm…so, I’m not a prude.  There were a few times where I did outright laugh but for the most part, the film’s appeal is similar to that of a gruesome car accident.  You don’t really WANT to see any of it and you know not looking away makes you a bad person but you can’t help but look…and stare…and gawk….and repeatedly ask yourself, “Am I really seeing what I think I’m seeing?!”

Ironically, animation has been around for so long now that I think if done right, there probably is a niche market for cartoon movies that appeal to adults (not as in the characters have to hump and drop F-bombs every five seconds just for the freak out factor) but because there may be things that can be done through animation that real life actors can’t do.

STATUS: I don’t want to call it shelf-worthy or non-shelf-worthy.  Rather, if you’re easily offended, stay away.  If you’re a rubbernecker who can’t help but stare at an ungodly traffic accident, then this film is for you.

About an hour into the film, I found myself thinking, “OK Seth. I get the joke. You’re going to make cartoon food products do terrible things because you can.”

I came.  I saw.  I was already f&*ked up.

We all aspire to be the first one to do something.  Seth, as far as I know, is the first film maker to document food products vigorously humping each other on screen, so no one can take that dubious honor away from him I suppose.

You know 3.5 readers, all I know is that around the turn of the millennium, I was in college and a bunch of my buddies and I went to see South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.  We were in hysterics of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s raunchy brand of comedy.

Those two broke many taboos and did the world suffer for it?

Yes.  Yes it did. The world totally sucks now.  Thanks a lot, Trey and Matt.

But at least Sausage Party couldn’t make the world any worse than it already is now, right?

I’m sure the current generation of immature college students are guffawing all over the sight of hot food on food action.