"Sausage Party" Review

Okay, listen. I'm going to try and tell you just enough about this movie Sausage Party for you to decide whether or not you should see it. Honestly, I may not even have to say much at all. This not-so-subtle phallic poster should pretty much spell out precisely what you're in for. Look at the names in the cast there. Would you expect anything less from pretty much all of those people? I'm going to attempt to review this thing for you as best I can without giving anything away, so here goes...

Sausage Party is an animated film featuring the voice talents of Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, and Kristen Wiig among several others. It's about food and what happens when we purchase food from the grocery store to prepare at home. Oh, did I also mention that this lively cartoon about food pushes the boundaries of an R-rating further than Deadpool? Seriously, I cannot express this in any more dire a fashion - DO NOT bring your children to see this film!!! They will never eat again.

In terms of a story, picture Toy Story 2 and 3 with 500 F-bombs and sex jokes. Honestly though, beneath that veneer of crassness, Sausage Party is an iteration of Homer's "Odyssey" unlike any to come before it.

Frank (Rogen) is a hot dog, and Brenda (Wiig) is a hot dog bun. They are boyfriend and girlfriend and cannot wait for the day that they are removed from their packages and Frank can finally slide all up into Brenda. Yeah. That's this movie. The food at Shopwell's supermarket imagines that, when they are removed from the shelves by shoppers/"the gods," they are being chosen for an eternal life of bliss in the "Great Beyond." When a jar of Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) is purchased and later returned to the shelf, he claims that the "Great Beyond" is actually a living hell full of death and destruction. After the store closes for the night, Frank, Brenda, Lavash (David Krumholtz), Teresa the Taco (Salma Hayek) and Sammy Bagel, Jr. (Edward Norton, doing a decent Woody Allen impression) embark on a quest to discover the truth about their "gods" and what really happens when food leaves the store.

A whole lot of other wild shit happens, and along the way, our heroes meet lots of interesting characters. At it's core, this film tells an odyssey story, but it also explores the folly of both man and religion. I'm not kidding. Sausage Party actually has very worthwhile subtext, all told with food. It pushes boundaries throughout its trim 90-minute run time before finally, irrevocably, overstepping the line with possibly the most gonzo finale to a movie you're likely to ever see. Literally nothing you've seen before can prepare you. You'll have to either take my word for it or see it for yourself. It's just that bonkers.

(I'm not sure what kind of a final grade this movie warrants. It has so many compelling pieces which come together in unique ways, but it's a Seth Rogen comedy about talking food. Let it be known, however, that I will be encouraging grown adults to see this movie. That's endorsement enough.)

"Finding Dory" Review

Disney and Pixar Animation Studios invite millennials to revisit their childhoods with a sequel that will most assuredly pack theaters with the awkward dichotomy of viewers aged 5 and 25.

Finding Dory lends backstory to everyone's favorite memory-challenged blue tang (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) from Finding Nemo. As a young fish, Dory was separated from her parents and has spent her entire life looking for them. Her search is interrupted when she (literally) bumps into Marlin, (voiced by Albert Brooks) a clownfish searching frantically for his missing son. One year later, Dory starts recalling fragments of her childhood; clues that she's convinced will lead her to her family. Her search leads her to "the Jewel of Morro Bay, California," which turns out to be a marine life institute/eco-park. Meanwhile, Marlin and Nemo follow Dory to ensure that she doesn't get too lost. At the institute, Dory meets several new characters including Hank the octopus (voiced by Ed O'Neill), Destiny the whale shark (voiced by Kaitlin Olson), and Bailey the beluga whale (voiced by Ty Burrell). Each has their own set of endearing dysfunctions; Destiny is nearsighted, Bailey's echolocation doesn't work properly, and Hank may be the only sea animal who WANTS to go to the Cleveland aquarium. Despite their flaws, Dory needs all the help she can get if she's going to find her parents and live happily ever after.

Let's be clear. Finding Nemo is still a superior film in every way. Dory suffers from "sequelitis," which means it forfeits some of its charm by repeating too many story beats from Nemo. Many of the newly-imagined plot points hinge on mindless cartoon mayhem rather than a nuanced approach to grown-up themes and a subtle sense of humor - hallmarks of Pixar's best and brightest.

Perhaps controversially, the film still glosses over the thing with the lesbian couple and also seems to poke fun at characters who are different, like Gerald the sea lion, who comes off as a caricature of mental retardation and the brunt of several jokes from new characters Fluke (voiced by Idris Elba) and Rudder (voiced by Dominic West). Depending on how they typically respond to portrayals in movies and television, parents of children with developmental disabilities will walk away either appalled or overjoyed by the way Dory involves a character who overcomes all obstacles either by using her disability to her advantage or with the assistance of a friend.

Potential flaws aside, Dory maintains a fascinating sense of pathos with the main character's backstory, and it's impossible not to fall for some of the new side characters like Destiny and Bailey. It's far from a masterpiece, but this is Pixar's best sequel since Toy Story 3, and it is absolutely a journey worth taking in 3-D.

B+

"The Angry Birds Movie" Review

Your favorite smartphone app from 2011 finally has its own feature-length animated movie! And to be honest, it isn't nearly as godawful as expected. It's not great either, but Sony Pictures Animation's The Angry Birds Movie proves to be a colorful, consistently hilarious, early-Summer diversion.

If you're wondering how they ever made a story out of Angry Birds, here's the gist - Red (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) has problems controlling his temper. After blowing up at a child's birthday party, Judge Peckinpah (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) sentences Red to anger management classes where he meets Chuck (voiced by Josh Gad) and Bomb (voiced by Danny McBride). In the throes of their rehabilitation, the birds' idyllic island is visited by a band of boisterous pigs from across the sea. Led by their king, Leonard (voiced by Bill Hader), the pigs quickly assimilate with the birds. This seems fishy to Red, who stumbles on the pigs' plot to distract the birds and steal their eggs. When an inquiry with the bird hero Mighty Eagle (voiced by Peter Dinklage) proves fruitless, it's up to Red, Chuck, Bomb, and the rest of the birds to hatch a rescue mission to retrieve the eggs from Piggy Island.

I was surprised to find that the film lends more of itself to character development and story than trying to recreate gameplay. Although we get some of that during the gonzo third act, I found myself caring more about Red's redemption and how the filmmakers cleverly and humorously integrate "angry" into the solution. That isn't to say that anger and violence are always the answer, or that outsiders should never be trusted, but let's be honest. This is The Angry Birds Movie based on an iPhone game. On principle alone, one should have an easy time suspending disbelief.

I think the film's biggest issue is that it doesn't manage to contribute anything meaningful to the animated movie canon. It lacks the brains to afford it a place alongside Pixar's finest and features a couple of extremely crude jokes that don't need to be in a movie marketed to 6, 7 and 8 year olds. Granted, one of them made me laugh harder than I have in a while, but the film is packed with enough cheeky sight gags and puns that some inessential laughs could've probably afforded to fly the coop.

The voice acting is generally solid, with one very curious standout. During the opening titles, you'll notice the name "Sean Penn" at fifth or sixth billing. I said to myself "They got freaking Sean Penn for The Angry Birds Movie?" IMDb confirms this is THE Sean Penn. He plays a character called Terence, who is like Red on steroids. Fans of the game should place him as "the big brother bird" or, as I call him, the giant, heavy, wrecking-ball bird. Terence is also in the anger management program with Red, Chuck, and Bomb. Terence spends the entire movie sitting there grumbling. Talking about beginning-to-end hilarity, this joke didn't hit me until after I left the theater: Sony must've given THE Sean Penn $1 million to literally walk into a sound booth and growl. This may be the film's biggest joke of all.

So is The Angry Birds Movie essential? Not by a long shot, but it's here now and can never be erased from this world. It's not as clever a piece of commercial art as something like The Lego Movie, but it offers plenty of laughs and some dazzling animation. You could do worse.

B-