Sausage Party takes a Toy Story-like approach, but with food instead of playthings. Most of the movie takes place in a grocery store where the products await for the day they are chosen by the gods (humans) to be taken past the doors into the Great Beyond. While no one knows for sure what will happen after they've left the store, everyone believes it can only be good.
The movie focuses on Frank (Seth Rogen, This Is The End, The Night Before), your average sausage who can't wait to be chosen and hopes that his girlfriend, a hot dog bun named Brenda (Kristen Wiig, Ghostbusters, Bridesmaids) will join him. When the day comes that both Frank's and Brenda's packages are chosen, disaster strikes and a spilled shopping cart leaves the couple, as well as a few other characters, out of their packages and on the floor.
While Frank's package-mates, Barry (Michael Cera, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Youth in Revolt) and Carl (Jonah Hill, the Jump Street series, The Wolf of Wall Street) are purchased and taken to the Great Beyond, Frank and Brenda have to try to figure out how to get back on their shelf and, hopefully, be chosen again.
Joining the pair are Kareem Abdul Lavash (David Krumholtz, Numb3rs) and Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton, Fight Club) and while all four are looking to get back to their homes, Frank decides to take a detour to investigate the rantings of the Jar of Honey Mustard (Danny McBride, Tropic Thunder, Your Highness) that caused the shopping cart mishap in the first place. According to the Honey Mustard, who was recently purchased and returned, the Great Beyond is a lie. In order to find the truth, Frank will seek out the advice of Firewater (Bill Hader, Inside Out, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), Mr. Grits (Craig Robinson, The Office, Hot Tub Time Machine) and Twink (Scott Underwood), the Nonperishables.
Along the way, the group picks up a new friend in Teresa del Taco (Salma Hayek, Desperado, Dogma) a taco shell with her own motivations to help Brenda. They also end up making an enemy in Douche (Nick Kroll, The League). The shopping cart accident has left him broken and without a purpose, but when he finds a way to rejuvenate himself, Douche will do whatever he can to get back at Frank and Brenda for his lost opportunity to go to the Great Beyond.
Rounding out the cast of Sausage Party are James Franco (11.22.63, 127 Hours) as a druggie that Barry will encounter during his adventures outside of the grocery store and Paul Rudd (Ant-Man, I Love You, Man), the manager of the store. While neither character has a lot of screentime, they both play pivotal roles in the movie's plot.
While a lot of this might sound like a movie that is good for the whole family, or something that has only references to adult content that children wouldn't get (a la Shrek), that is most definitely not the case. Sausage Party takes full advantage of its R rating. The dialogue is filled with a laughable amount of cursing and adult content isn't just alluded to, it is discussed and even performed. So, while Sausage Party isn't for kids, the fact that every act described or depicted is done by food makes the experience a lot more ridiculous than offensive.
Sausage Party comes packaged with several featurettes. Some focus heavily on the voice actors and what the recording environment was like. Not only was there a good bit of ad lib in the performances (as seen in both the Line-O-Rama and the Gag Reel), but the actor being recorded wasn't alone in the booth, unlike most voiceover performances. Instead, many of the cast members were together in the recording booth playing off of each other.
Another special feature focuses on the creation of the film's song that introduces viewers to the Great Beyond, while another is a commercial featuring Seth Rogen as he introduces the world to Frank in a similar manner to an old Walt Disney commercial. The last two special features include interviews with Rogen and Evan Goldberg as they talk about what it takes to pitch a movie and the specific trials around getting Sausage Party off the ground.
Sausage Party definitely isn't for everybody, but if you go in knowing it will be filled with low-brow humor, you should find yourself enjoying the film more than being offended by it.
