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Sausage Party

8/10

Stars: Voices: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton, Salma Hayek

Director: Conrad Vernon, Greg Tiernan

Given that the story, on which Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffer, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s enjoyably filthy screenplay is based, is by Rogen, Goldberg and Jonah Hill, it should come as little surprise that the animated adventures of a riotous supermarket products contains enough references to sex and so many F words that even Channel 4 might blush and definitely earns the film its 15 certificate.

While vegetarians and vegans might be put off by the titles, there’s considerable lewd and crude entertainment to be derived from the strictly-for-adults-only extravaganza about the unlikely lives and even stranger aspirations of a bunch of anthropomorphized goods living on supermarket shelves and believing eternal happiness will be theirs when they are bought and taken to “heaven” by customers.

Their aspirant heaven turn hellish when star sausage Frank (no relation!) leans about the real fates that await them, stating “I'm Frank and I am a sausage... a little sausage with some pretty big news... Everything we've been led to relieve is a lie! When we get chosen by the Gods, They're choosing us for death! Murder! Automatic expiration!... The Great Beyond is bullshit!”.

After which the understandably traumatised products, catalyzed by a jar of honey mustard with a worse attitude than even a television game show loser, start a lunatic revolution to save their skins – and that turns out to be not just simply sausages and other peel-able products but all and sundry other supermarket residents as well….

Graphic bread roll-sausage sex? Check! Smut ad lib? Check? Lively low musical numbers? Check. Directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan definitely deliver.

Vocal casting, too, is first rate with Rogen and Goldberg making the most of their dialogue and Edward Norton deserving praise for his daffy Woody Allen sound-alike bagel bonding with a Middle Eastern flatbread.

(Ironically, contemporary youngsters armed with iPod-discovered facts and school-learned filthy language might well enjoy the disgracefully funny show even more than the 15+ cinemagoers at which the movie is aimed).

Alan Frank

USA 2016. UK Distributor: Sony. Colour.
88 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 2, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 2, Swearing 3.

Review date: 11 Sep 2016