Review of Sausage Party

Sausage Party is subversive. According to it's agenda, any animated movie trope that can be lampooned will be lampooned, often mercilessly. As Disney and Pixar have shown us, everything from animals to cars to robots to actual personification of emotions (Inside Out) can have feelings in an animated universe. Sausage Party not only takes this concept to its logical extreme by giving faces, bodies, and life to food, it embodies them with swearing, weed, and sex on the brain. But while you can laugh your head off at Sausage Party simply for the novelty of a major animated motion picture venturing this deep into R-rated territory, there's actually a surprising amount of social commentary beneath it all. That's right folks; come for the jokes, stay for the pointed observations about religious customs.

The movie opens in a supermarket called Shopwell's, where all our food friends sing a very funny, off-color musical number about their desire to reach "The Great Beyond." Apparently, every anthropomorphized item in this world believes that when a shopper chooses him/her, off they go into eternal Heaven (as opposed to the Hell of being eaten). Hot dog Frank (Seth Rogen) and bun Brenda (Kristen Wiig) are about to have their dreams come true when their packages are chosen during a 4th of July shopping spree when a jar of Honey Mustard (Danny McBride), having seen the true horrors of the other side, is returned to the store and upends everything. Stranded among the aisles and far away from home, Frank and Brenda begin an odyssey where they eventually learn the horrifying truth of their existence. And oh yeah, they also have to fend off the revenge-fueled villainy of a douche (Nick Kroll). No, really. An actual douche.

At some point watching an animated movie, even a great one, we've all had those twisted thoughts of "hey, how would these characters have sex?" or "do they ever do the crazy, adults-only shit that we do?" Oh, they do in Sausage Party, and they do it often with hilarious results. Food puns and sexual gags abound in this movie's world, and even when you're not busting a gut laughing, you'll at least be smiling and admiring the cleverness of it all. And it doesn't stop there, sending up race relations in the form of Kosher and Halal foods fighting for aisle space, a box of grits and a bottle of Firewater seething at how the crackers stole their land, and a sauerkraut army on a mission to "exterminate the juice." Or how about the movie's chief villain, a literal douche with a personality ripped straight from that of an obnoxious gym-obsessed bro? And then there's the food orgy scene, which is so wacky and envelope-pushing that it deserves the price of a ticket all by itself. You'll have to see it to believe it.

Directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon have made a movie very much in keeping with the Rogen/Goldberg canon. But Sausage Party rises to another level thanks to some surprisingly on-target commentary regarding religious fanaticism. The myth of the Great Beyond, how the characters deconstruct it, and the anger with which some react to having their beliefs questioned (even though they're objectively wrong) is fascinating. There's also the idea that certain characters (like Brenda) have in their heads that if they exercise "unclean" thoughts, the Gods will frown upon them. Sound familiar?The movie ultimately argues for an approach that unifies us in spite of our differences, which isn't all that different from a Disney/Pixar movie. But since Sausage Party is in no way intended for children, it can skip the family-friendly moralizing and go straight for the jugular the way top-notch South Park does.

Sausage Party feels alive. In a summer of countless sequels, remakes, and reboots, its creativity stands out from the pack. There's at least something amusing if not laugh-aloud funny around every corner, provided of course you're not easily offended. If you are... well... there's an angry thinkpiece right around the corner with your name on it. As a send-up of the classic animated movie formula where anthropomorphized creatures learn valuable life lessons, Sausage Party nails the sweet spot. You'll find yourself weirdly caring about these food-based characters even while laughing at their profanity-sex-and-weed-drenched adventures. And the social commentary, which the marketing team has smartly hid from the movie's advertisements, elevates this raunch-fest to the next level. Dig in and enjoy.


Rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

Review of Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad takes a great premise-- that of comic book "bad guys" fighting for their freedom against even worse guys-- and squanders it big time. As the next step in the evolution of the DC Expanded Universe, this movie is barely any better than Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman. Sure, it rectifies one of that movie's greatest flaws by allowing humor into picture for the first time, but it creates a laundry list of new issues too. This is a dull, messy, paint-by-numbers superhero story with little to recommend it outside of two fun, high energy performances by Will Smith and Margot Robbie. The action sequences show little spark, the villains (excluding the Joker-- more on him later) feel incredibly weak, and the whole story shows signs of being cut up and stitched back together into something borderline incoherent.

To be fair, the first 30 minutes of Suicide Squad are solidly entertaining as it sets up the situation and the main characters. The soundtrack even provides each antihero with his/her own classic rock tune when introduced. There's Deadshot (Smith), a hitman who never misses; Harley Quinn (Robbie), the psychotic girlfriend of The Joker (Jared Leto), the boomerang-wielding thief Digger Harness (Jai Courtney), the pryomaniac El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), the human crocodile Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and the sword master Katana (Karen Fukuhara). When the evil sorceress Enchantress, who has possessed the body of Dr. June Moone (Cara Delevigne), escapes custody and creates an army hellbent on destroying humanity for.... well, reasons I guess.... it's up to the newly crowned "Suicide Squad" to take down that which normal humans cannot. Of course, they're kept under strict watch by government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), who won't hesitate to end their lives (via explosive devices implanted in their necks) if they step out of line.

It seems no superhero franchise can exist without a God-like villain, but Enchantress represents by far the weakest one in recent memory. Even the title villain in X-Men: Apocalypse was better motivated than this. Nothing about this character makes any sense whatsoever, from the flimsy rules regarding how she possesses someone, to the way she unearths her equally ridiculous-looking brother Incubus (Robin Atkin Downes), to a climactic stand off that's about as dumb and logic-defying as one can think of. We get plenty of action sequences leading up to this in which our anti-heroes face off against pimply, toad-like soldiers that look like Star Wars Cantina rejects, but these are about as exciting as watching someone else play a Call of Duty video game. You've seen it all done before and done better. It's sad that for all the hype behind Suicide Squad, a plot this basic, derivative, and lacking in urgency was the best they could come up with.

This was by most accounts a troubled production with multiple teams of editors, extensive re-shoots, and a script written in six weeks, and the results bear this out. Awkward, half-baked flashbacks (like El Diablo's tragic past and Harley Quinn's budding romance with the Joker) pop up randomly in the middle of the mission, transitions feel missing, and the movie guns for grand, emotional moments that the characters don't earn. At one point, Harley Quinn disappears for all of about five minutes, only to turn up later and have the other guys tell her how glad they are to have her back. Huh? Even Batman (Ben Affleck) and the Flash (Ezra Miller) show up for cameos shoehorned into the story. For those who thought that maybe, just maybe, the lack of narrative thrust in these movies would be fixed without Zack Snyder on board, sorry. Even with David Ayer (End of Watch, Fury) taking over, it's still a systemic issue.

Winning performances from Will Smith and Margot Robbie (and perhaps Viola Davis, who acquits herself reasonably well as the "Nick Fury" of this story) go a long way toward saving Suicide Squad from being a complete dumpster fire. Many of Deadshot's one-liners are (pardon the pun) on target, especially a few relating to, of all things, legendary basketball coach Phil Jackson. His dramatic backstory involving his 11-year old daughter is intriguing enough to make us want more. Meanwhile, Robbie goes all out with her own brand of zaniness mixed with sex appeal. There were times when I wished the rest of this bland team and the idiotic plot would go away and allow these two to dominate their own two-hour movie. And maybe that movie would've given Jared Leto's Joker a larger role. He shows up in this one for 10 minutes tops and at such random intervals that you wonder why he's here at all. For all the talk about how memorably crazy he was on set, the character's presence in this movie has been butchered beyond belief.

In my review of Batman v Superman, I wrote that Warner Bros, in their zeal to catch up to Disney/Marvel, have rushed their characters onto the screen without proper buildup. Now with Suicide Squad, we see even more what hack jobs these movies are. Say what you will about the "assembly line" quality of Marvel's films; at least they're put together more cohesively than the first-draft-quality script we have here. After a promising first 30 minutes, Suicide Squad progressively loses steam, wit, and any sense of fun through the end, when most "regular" moviegoers (i.e. not comic book die-hards) can manage little more than a shrug. This is a February caliber of action movie which somehow found its way into summer blockbuster season. Credit great marketing and trailers but a poor product. And that's about where the DC Expanded Universe sits right now.

Rating: ** (out of ****)