One big wiener likes to get all up in your face. Another wiener is not as long as his meat buddies, but he's got girth. There's a genius wad of gum in a wheelchair. The gum sounds like Stephen Hawking. And there's a lesbian taco shell. They're all in an animated feature I watched over the weekend on Netflix. If you watched SAUSAGE PARTY on the job, you'd have the keep the audio very low because the language is extremely NSFW (Not Safe For Work). It's offensive. And funny. The Seth Rogen comedy posse is involved in this -- Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson -- so that should prepare you for what your ears are about to experience. You've got potty-mouthed produce and sexually frustrated supermarket items running for their lives.
All the food items think that we human shoppers are gods who take them to a wonderful, magical place like The Emerald City in THE WIZARD OF OZ. Then some of the food items see the shocking truth when they are purchased and wind up in a torture chamber called "a kitchen." Baby carrots are eaten. The eyes and skin on a potato are peeled off. Chips and cheese are placed in a microwave oven. The horror...the horror.
They must flee, return to the supermarket and warn the others. They must fight back. In the meantime, the lesbian taco warrior has a crush on the lovely lady buns that one wiener wants as his girlfriend. A Middle Eastern food item must learn to get along with a New York bagel.
Yes, there's salty language coming from salted foods and there's some freaky same-aisle sex among the products that will make you think the supermarket should've been called Glory Whole Foods, but this silly and verbally offensive feature did make me laugh. As a performer who has done a lot of voiceover work on television, I loved the voiceover work actors did in SAUSAGE PARTY.
I did not click off when the closing credits started to roll because I wanted to see work did the perfect Woody Allen imitation vocal work for the bagel.
How talented can one actor be?!?!? It was....EDWARD NORTON!
The bagel was voiced by the same man who played the talented but egotistical and annoying Broadway actor (think of young William Hurt) in BIRDMAN...
...played Inspector Henckels in THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL...
...the racist skinhead convict in AMERICAN HISTORY X...
...the charismatic but delusional Southern California cowboy in DEEP IN THE VALLEY...
...and the British doctor working to cure cholera in 1920s China while dealing with the virus of infidelity that has infected his marriage. Edward Norton and Naomi Watts were remarkable in 2006's THE PAINTED VEIL.
Top critics loved THE PAINTED VEIL and picked it as one of the year's Ten Best films. I agreed with them. But it didn't seem to get much promotion and movie audiences let it pass by. I paid to see it and the audience loved it. One woman in a row behind me said "That was a movie like in the good ol' days." I agreed with her. It was like a classic Fred Zinnemann or William Wyler film. It should have been an Oscar nominee for Best Picture. Norton and Watts were Oscar-nomination worthy. So was veteran actress Diana Rigg as a very worldly nun. THE PAINTED VEIL is a mature, quality film that did not get a single Oscar nomination. Stars Edward Norton and Naomi Watts produced it.
Edward Norton showed all that versatility and range in previous performances -- and then proved to be a great bagel in SAUSAGE PARTY. I love me some Edward Norton.
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