Sausage Party purports to go wild, and indeed, wild it goes: wildly crude, wildly offensive, wildly stupid, wildly good, wildly bad. This food-filled, family-unfriendly animation leaves a stinking smorgasbord of tastes in the mouth, some surprising, some complimentary, some utterly tasteless. If only for the fact that it's unlike just about any other movie you've ever seen, it's worth checking out, but it boasts considerable qualities of its own to enhance the experience. It's monumentally, delectably lewd, yet also remarkably savvy to the social issues which it neatly works into its overarching metaphor. When the writers take aim at the privileged, they don't merely hit their marks but rip them to shreds; when they take the comfortable approach / excuse of non-discriminatory offence, Sausage Party turns sour. There's a laudable open-mindedness and humanism to the theorizing, but it's symptomatic of the lazy, presumptuous, inexperienced minds of those who actively benefit from privilege and consider themselves progressive for simply rejecting it when the mood takes them. Poking fun and then pulling in for a hug is just obnoxious - would that the filmmakers knew which side of the fence to sit on, rather than attempting to encompass every area around it. Seth Rogen's opinions on the conflict in Palestine aren't particularly welcome given his history on the subject, yet still Sausage Party finds a multitude of means of redemption in the strangest spots. The old 'aren't we all bisexual really?' thing gets bandied about for a finale that's nevertheless hilarious, and similarly, the film's digs at American attitudes toward sex and religion are handled perfectly; making your casual racism as blatant as possible, however, doesn't negate its inherent offensive identity. But you're supposed to laugh, and laugh I frequently did. Sausage Party delivers - it purports to go wild, and indeed, wild it goes!
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