THERE seems to be a trend in movies of late, to include all the best bits in the trailer.
More than that, sometimes the trailer IS the movie, and a visit to the cinema can be nothing short of an exercise in futility. Unfortunately, this appears to be the case with ‘Sausage Party’.
Much like ‘The Secret Life of Pets’, where the entire premise, (what animals get up to when their owners are away), is contained in a 10-minute spell, here the trailer that has so many people talking, is the best part of the film.
The basic idea, what would happen if supermarket food had feelings and could talk, and actually believed that shoppers were gods who would set them free from their packaging prisons, is pretty clever.
I mean, when the food eventually finds out that the humans intend to skin them alive, cook and eat them, that’s pretty hilarious. Only problem is, the rest of the film is just fluff, and pretty lazy, profane fluff at that.
There are plenty of opportunities for humour, but more often than not, instead of a joke, the writers simply elect to insert the F word. That’s disappointing.
Apart from the trailer scene, the Woody Allen Jewish bagel and the Arabic pita bread are particularly entertaining, and probably deserve a spin off of their own.
Oh and there’s a Stephen Hawking character played by a piece of gum in a wheelchair. Are you starting to see the level of humour here?
Don’t get me wrong, this might be right up your aisle, and for many 18 to 29-year-olds, it probably will be. It’s just that when this idea was pitched, (I’m guessing as ‘Toy Story for food’) it held so much more potential. By the ‘Toy Story’ yardstick, this film falls way short.
But it is funny in patches, and to those who think the mere mention of the F word is enough to fall off their seat in hilarity, it may just be the film of the year. We score it a slightly stale, 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Paul O’Rourke
