There are no longer any limits to what can be shown in a major studio feature film. The perception that America is beholden to moral self-censoring is dead. Seth Rogen has killed it, or at least proven that it can be toppled with enough industry clout. Sausage Party is a hedonistic bacchanalia that throws any expectations for good taste out the window.
It’s crude, intentionally inflammatory and regressive in countless ways. Yet it’s also impossible not to respect it in some core areas, which creates a conflicting film that needs to be seen to be understood.

There’s nothing new about an adult comedy that masquerades as children’s entertainment. It’s a simple defiance of a Western assumption that all animated content is inherently childish. Sausage Party thrives on this trope, but is the first to push it into the modern age of CGI cinema. In stand-alone moments, it’s easy to mistake Sausage Party for the latest Dreamworks creation, all-star cast and all. Of course, that all falls apart once the characters start making jokes that would seem lowbrow even at a middle school lunch table.
For the first act, Sausage Party is deeply obsessed with offense. The blatant innuendo of a male sausage and a female bun is constantly exploited. Just about any foodstuff with an obvious ethnic identity is characterized as a flamboyant characteristic of that nation, from Nazi-saluting bottles of sauerkraut to a Native American bottle of whisky. The film hits every cliché on its quest to the absolute bottom of social comedy. But while the film may start low, its high-minded concept slowly pulls it up into something sublimely absurd.
Children’s cartoons have long celebrated the idea of personification, the childlike dream that everything around us has a soul. Sausage Party digs into the underside of this concept. What would our everyday expendables think of us? It’s certainly not a new premise (The Flintstones made jabs at it back in 1966). But Sausage Party finds countless black comedic beats to abuse with the setup. Rogen and Goldberg attempt to use their world as an allegory for religious fundamentalism, but their understanding of the topic seems fitting of the film’s juvenile humor. The film’s biggest laughs are always powered by disbelief and capped with jaw agape.
It all builds to a 20-minute finale that assaults the senses. Sausage Party‘s climax is a blend of violence, sex and debauchery that defies expectation. It’s darker, more brutal and has less restraint than any R-rated comedy of the past decade. Taboos of rape, violence against children and group sex are excused on the technicality that these characters aren’t technically human. The film takes idiotic sex comedy to the inevitable extreme, paying off every moronic joke in an orgy sequence that refuses to stop. It is the punchline to both Sausage Party and Rogen’s entire comedy career.
Sausage Party is a movie of debatable quality. The majority of the jokes are well delivered, yet strike for the lowest possible denominator. The attempts at social commentary are horrible, aside from that which is provided by its own existence. In a time that many consider to be a peak for modern entertainment, Rogen has topped the charts with a movie that climaxes with eight uninterrupted minutes of animated fetish porn. It’s a triumphant moment for artistic freedom within the studio structure. What it says about everything else will be a conversation for the history books.
Follow Chris Berg on Twitter @ChrisBerg25