SAUSAGE PARTY It's kind of like South Park, but if South Park was shitty.

IF YOU ACCIDENTALLY take kids to the Seth Rogen adult animated feature Sausage Party, don’t fret. There are around 100 uses of the word “fuck” in the first three minutes. So you’ll know what to do. But should you stick around? Well, if you’re a fan of excessive profanity, casual misogyny, an abundance of racism, and are okay with only a couple of good laughs in a 90-minute movie, then by all means hang around.

The plot—conceived by Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Jonah Hill—is a weak grasp at themes found in South Park, which was obviously Sausage Party’s primary inspiration. Here, anthropomorphized food products can’t wait to be picked up by grocery shoppers, believing that heaven awaits beyond the supermarket’s sliding glass doors. Though Frank (a sausage voiced by Rogen) tries to spread the truth, he’s pursued by a vengeful douche (Nick Kroll)—who, yes, is an actual douche.

Unrelenting puns are the go-to jokes in this script, and each food or drink product is assigned a personality based on race: A flatbread is given a stereotypical Middle Eastern makeover, while his enemy, a bagel, is a Jew with a heavy, Woody Allen-esque accent. Interestingly, neither actor voicing these characters is Middle Eastern (David Krumholtz) or Jewish (Edward Norton)—though Norton is white and has proclaimed himself an “honorary Jew”… so there’s that! Similarly, Bill Hader (also a white guy) plays “Firewater,” a Native American bottle of booze (no thank you), who grunts and uses sign language much like the racist “Indian Chief” in Disney’s 1953 feature Peter Pan.

This just in: It’s not 1953. And whether or not Rogen’s overarching message—that religion is a bunch of baloney—is progressive, or if Sausage Party contains a couple of very funny scenes (including a glorious food orgy), there’s no getting around it: This movie is fucking bullshit.

Excuse the French.

Bang bang, choo-choo train, let me see you shake that thang. Wm. Steven Humphrey is the editor-in-chief of the Portland Mercury and has held the job since 2000. (So don’t get any funny ideas.)

5 replies on “<i>Sausage Party</i>: A Reminder That Fine Cinema Is a Powerful and Subtle Art Form”

  1. Actors of fully Jewish background: Logan Lerman, Natalie Portman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mila Kunis, Bar Refaeli, James Wolk, Anton Yelchin, Paul Rudd, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Julian Morris, Adam Brody, Kat Dennings, Gabriel Macht, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Erin Heatherton, Lisa Kudrow, Lizzy Caplan, Gal Gadot, Debra Messing, Jason Isaacs, Jon Bernthal, Robert Kazinsky, Melanie Laurent, Esti Ginzburg, Shiri Appleby, Justin Bartha, Margarita Levieva, Elizabeth Berkley, Halston Sage, Seth Gabel, Corey Stoll, Mia Kirshner, Alden Ehrenreich, Debra Winger, Eric Balfour, Emory Cohen, Scott Mechlowicz, Odeya Rush, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy.

    Andrew Garfield and Aaron Taylor-Johnson are Jewish, too (though I don’t know if both of their parents are).

    Actors with Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers: Jake Gyllenhaal, Dave Franco, James Franco, Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Radcliffe, Alison Brie, Eva Green, Joaquin Phoenix, River Phoenix, Emmy Rossum, Ryan Potter, Rashida Jones, Jennifer Connelly, Sofia Black D’Elia, Nora Arnezeder, Goldie Hawn, Ginnifer Goodwin, Amanda Peet, Eric Dane, Jeremy Jordan, Joel Kinnaman, Ben Barnes, Patricia Arquette, Kyra Sedgwick, Dave Annable, and Harrison Ford (whose maternal grandparents were both Jewish, despite those Hanukkah Song lyrics).

    Actors with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers, who themselves were either raised as Jews and/or identify as Jews: Ezra Miller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alexa Davalos, Nat Wolff, Nicola Peltz, James Maslow, Josh Bowman, Winona Ryder, Michael Douglas, Ben Foster, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nikki Reed, Zac Efron, Jonathan Keltz, Paul Newman.

    Oh, and Ansel Elgort’s father is Jewish, though I don’t know how Ansel was raised. Robert Downey, Jr. and Sean Penn were also born to Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers. Armie Hammer and Chris Pine are part Jewish.

    Actors with one Jewish-born parent and one parent who converted to Judaism: Dianna Agron, Sara Paxton (whose father converted, not her mother), Alicia Silverstone, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.

  3. This movie has an 86% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is getting positive reviews from everyone from Rolling Stone to NPR. I’ll go with their opinion on this one, thank you.

  5. “..casual misogyny, an abundance of racism, and are okay with only a couple of good laughs in a 90-minute movie, then by all means hang around.”

    Oddly enough, this line also works for the new Ghostbusters movie

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