SXSW Film Festival has been a launching pad to create buzz for mainstream studio comedies such as Bridesmaids, Neighbors, and Spy. Sony’s Sausage Party continues the trend, but viewers at the Paramount theater were treated with an animated movie that crossed quite a few lines. The truly “work-in-progress” screening featured still images and unfinished animation and really isn’t completed. We shouldn’t judge a movie until it is done, but what a crazy one.
The boundaries of animated decency and what can be tolerated in a mainstream movie have been obliterated with Sausage Party. This is the most outrageous, hilarious, politically incorrect and raunchiest cartoon movie ever. Everything is thrown at you and there are countless crude jokes. The creativity of producing a world of supermarket foods is fun and the subtext that critiques political and cultural norms is daring. I couldn’t stop laughing and gasping!
The vocal performances from Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and especially Kristen Wiig were very good. Rogen admitted after the Q&A that this was a labor of love of his that he spent several years trying to create. Sony and Rogen have another winning collaboration Evan Goldberg this time with the director of Aliens vs. Monsters Conrad Vernon.
The trailer below does a good job at setting up the world the food inhabits for curious viewers. I had a conversation with someone in the industry earlier this festival about how I admired animated movies like Inside Out and Anomalisa for expanding what can be done within the context of the genre. In its own special way, the same could be said for Sausage Party.
Even though the red band trailer is pretty foul, it is on par with a Pixar short compared to what SXSW audiences watched last night. Do not let children see this movie. I’m not sure if a few adults could handle this movie. It goes to uncomfortable places. You’ve all been warned!
