Movie Review: Adult animation cooks up some laughs

Movie Review: Sausage Party (MA) - rating 6.5/10

When the first word that springs to mind after watching a film is ‘weird’, writing an analytical review becomes tricky.

While Sausage Party carries an MA-rating in Australia, it has been marketed overseas as the first ever R-rated computer-generated animation, which should give some indication as to the film’s target market.

Essentially, Sausage Party’s plot is about a group of supermarket products who go on a quest to find what the world is like once they leave the store.

The likes of Seth Rogen, Michael Cera and Jonah Hill are involved in the film and therefore it should be no surprise that strong language and sexual humour are plentiful.

To criticise the use of these seems like an antiquated and a killjoy response, because these can be superb techniques for laugh-out-loud comedy when used properly.

While the tension between a sausage named Frank and a hotdog bun named Brenda provides the inevitable romantic subplot, it felt like Sausage Party was otherwise gratuitous for the sake of it.

With the exception of a handful of scenes, including the ending, toddlers and young children could almost have watched the film on mute and enjoyed the antics of the animated foodstuffs on a completely different level to those watching with sound.

There were definitely highlights, including the subtle political commentary including references to the Israel-Palestine conflict which may have gone over some viewers’ heads.

I consider myself part of the target market for the film and hoped it would tickle my fancy.

My pre-film thoughts were that it would be either comedy genius or a complete failure.

It was somewhere in between.

MOVIE REVIEW

Sausage Party

Rated: MA

Review: Lincoln Bertelli

Rating: 6.5/10