Cleanup On Aisle 69

Year: 2016

Director: Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon

Cast: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I can take or leave Seth Rogen. When he’s doing Neighbors or plying himself in The Comeback, I’m all in. When he’s working with Judd Apatow, I’m 50/50. I’ve never disliked a performance of his, nor have I been utterly enamored of one. But when it comes down to his producing and writing choices, I can’t deny that he’s hit his stride. While I haven’t adored every movie in his recent string of films (This is the End, The Interview, Neighbors 2), he’s unafraid of being conceptually audacious, and I have heaps of respect for that.

Which brings us to the latest entry in his oeuvre: Sausage Party, an R-rated twist on the Pixar ethos. While he comedy’s juvenile at best, the script has no right to be as thematically sharp and satirical as it is. He can put one more notch in his belt because, no paper, this one’s another win.

Butcher paper, that is.

In Sausage Party, the food in the grocery store is sentient, and all they want is to be taken home to the Great Beyond by us, the Gods. They believe we will grant them an eternity of happiness and sensual pleasure. However, when Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) is returned by a customer having become a shuddering wreck, hot dog Frank (Seth Rogen) begins to have doubts about the Great Beyond. His antics cause him and his devout bun girlfriend Brenda (Kristen Wiig) to fall out of their cart, forced to find their home aisle before they lose their freshness.

Brenda wants her journey to lead her home, and Frank wants his journey to lead to the truth. They’re joined by Kareem Abdul Lavash (David Krumholtz) and Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton), two walking stereotypes that act out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for some godforsaken reason. Also there’s Barry (Michael Cera), a stunted hot dog who has seen the truth about the Great Beyond – that kitchens are essentially less-fun Jigsaw traps for groceries – and struggles to return to the store to warn his friend. Oh, and a douchey Douche (Nick Kroll) wants to destroy Frank and Brenda for accidentally bending his nozzle.

I don’t know whether it’s the fault of the middling-at-best, horrifyingly-inelegant-at-worst animation or my blissful ignorance, but I definitely thought he was a toilet brush for like 15 minutes.

Do you think cartoon characters cussing is the funniest thing in the world? Then you should just pre-order your special edition quadruple disc Blu-Ray now, because you are going to love the s**t out of Sausage Party. As expected, the film has one foot firmly plated in the sophomoric at all times, but it’s the other foot that’s going interesting places.

This whole script is a feature-length allegory about the creation of religion, the horrible things it makes people to to one another and themselves, and why we shouldn’t be so quick to cast judgment on people who subscribes to different belief systems than us. Also, the moral is that raging hedonism is our only defense against our inevitable mortality, so it’s pretty much like Toy Story 3. I know, right? You got your subtext all over my R-rated comedy! How did this get in here? It’s an incredibly clever story that has heck-all to do with naughty hijinks, but whatever. I’m there.

It’s to the point that I can actually see somebody’s life philosophy changing to some degree after a screening of Sausage Party. As alarming as that sounds, that honestly might just be a good thing. I’m physically upset by how deeply I respect the intellectual cogs spinning behind the movie’s colorful cartoon façade. And then, of course, the rest of the movie is mostly super racist.

Thanks, everybody. I was getting too deep into liking this movie.

Not only is the humor desperately crude, which I’m fine with, it gives in to its urge to pattern every ethnic food after the most revolting racial stereotypes that can be produced by a screenwriting cabal of white dudes. Shock humor is all well and god, and the film does manage to convert the hideously insensitive Lavash and Bagel arc into something sweet and then appropriately twisted, however most of the racial humor is not only distasteful, but kind of lazy.

It doesn’t take more than a teaspoon of thought to make Grits (Craig Robinson) an angry black stereotype or to name your Native American liquor character (Bill Hader, why) firewater. So it’s pointless as well as disrespectful. This is humor that’s older than anyone reading this, and it’s certainly not funny today, if it ever was to begin with.

I’m terribly sorry to have such bad news to report about that aspect of the humor, because a lot of Sausage Party is really fun. When it goes whole hog depicting violence or sexuality, the film is at its best, and I’m not just saying this as a horror fan. Watching a film so gleefully unafraid to push the envelope of Hollywood sensibilities is a massively liberating experience. It’s certainly not for everyone, but as a cartoon about food, it’s enough degrees separated form human experience that even non-gorehounds should be able to get a kick out of it.

So much of Sausage Party is fun and intelligent and so much of it is crass and low-rent that it’s difficult to synthesize a proper score for the monstrosity. What I’ll say is this: Go see t if you have a high threshold for fratty, tasteless comedy. If you don’t, who cares. Have a nice day.

TL;DR: Sausage Party is mostly irreverent, weirdly intelligent fun despite its unfortunately prevalent racism.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 962

Bropocalypse

Year: 2013

Director: Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen

Cast: Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen, James Franco

Run Time: 1 hour 47 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

First, an apology for missing This Is the End when it was in theaters - due to reasons I've never been able to adequately comprehend, movie tickets cost money.

This is the first "End of the World" film from the relentlessly unwatchable and overwhelmingly nihilistic 2013 summer season and to my knowledge the only mainstream comedy (if not the only mainstream film in general) to deal with the Biblical Armageddon. Granted, it's Biblical Armageddon as experienced by a group of douchey comedy actors and viewed through a haze of pot smoke and dick jokes, but it's an interesting fact nonetheless.

Also to my knowledge, this is the only film in which the entire cast is playing themselves (albeit slightly fictionalized versions). This idea could almost certainly not exist in any other era, what with the mainstream media's increasingly microscopic coverage of the minutiae of the celebrity lifestyle. Thanks to Reality TV and TMZ (don't get me started), stars are more accessible to us. They have characters outside of their onscreen personas and they seem like they could be our friends. They are our friends.

It's hard to imagine Clark Gable or Audrey Hepburn being willing to take on a project like this (even without the dicks), but in today's world we have the ability to see what Anna Kendrick is having for breakfast. We can see Kim Kardashian's Christmas presents. We can visually explore the subtle daily shifts in Justin Bieber's abdominal body fat percentage. Why not make a movie like this?

Essentially, This Is the End is the apotheosis of meta. The period of postmodern cinematic recursion that didn't start with but reached highest visibility with the release of Scream, a film that thoroughly explored the concept that its characters were well aware that they were characters in a movie has reached its pinnacle. We've seen characters who know they're characters but what about characters that simply aren't characters at all?

Such a brilliantly weird high concept would almost certainly have ended up in a back drawer somewhere had it not been for the high profile cast attached to the project (and their willingness to take massive pay cuts). 

OK, so enough with the film theory BS. What about the actual movie?

It's.... OK.

The Bling Ring has gone way too far this time.

This Is the End is certainly funny, but it's funny like a California winter - mild and enjoyable, but you can't shake the feeling that it really should be something else.

The plot follows Jay Baruchel (Jay Baruchel, one of many Judd Apatow alums in the cast, having starred in Undeclared in 2001) on his first trip back to LA in some time. He's staying with his buddy Seth Rogen (Seth Rogen, who also co-wrote and co-directed) who suggests they hit up a party at James Franco(James Franco)'s new house in the Hollywood Hills despite Jay actively despising the whole scene and everyone there.

The party scene (one of the funniest scenes in the film) is a veritable avalanche of guest stars including Mindy Kaling, Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, a coked out Michael Cera, and scores of other good natured celebrities who gave up a weekend to help out with their friends' movie. It's really quite charming that none of the guests seem to be plugging themselves in any way, just appearing for the sake of how funny it is to see them die violently.

And boy do they. Immediately following the Rapture, a massive sinkhole opens up out front, swallowing fistfuls of celebrity partiers into the bowels of Hell. Michael Cera is impaled by a broken streetlight. Paul Rudd accidentally squishes a woman's head. It's really quite hilarious in a low fi CGI kind of way, although it seems more like a silly celebrity home video than an actual wide release motion picture (something which is true of essentially the entire movie).

Stars are nonchalantly chucked left and right without so much as a backwards glance. The only one who's actively mourned is Rihanna, a pop star whose preponderance of close-ups suggest that the filmmakers' passion for her rivals even Sergio's, a concept that is scientifically impossible.

As calculated by Einstein's Theory of Rihannativity.

The only survivors of the world's biggest party foul (besides a bedraggled Emma Watson who makes an extended cameo) are Jay, Seth, James, Craig Robinson (Craig Robinson), Jonah Hill (Jonah Hill), and Danny McBride (Danny McBride). And I hope I speak for more people than just me when I say who the hell is Danny McBride?

Against Jay's wishes, the six of them hole up in James Franco's palatial home to try and survive the siege of flames and sinkholes and poorly composited CGI monsters (the atrocious CGI is mostly forgivable here because the film in no way asks us to actually take the demonic threats seriously). The motley crew goes through the motions arguing over rations, forming alliances, and desperately trying to survive. Oh, also dancing to Gangnam Style (an already dated touch) and filming homemade sequels to Pineapple Express.

They also film reality TV-style confessionals that I choose to believe is part of the overarching parody of the Hollywood elite because they serve no actual purpose.

The bulk of the film takes place in this location and the comedy is mainly derived from watching these horrendously emotionally stunted individuals dealing with the apocalypse. The longer we spend in the house, however, the more grating the humor gets and by the time two of the men have a three minute shouting match about cum before another of them gets raped by a demon, I had long since checked out. By that point, the good bits had waned to the point of plateauing and the bad, sometimes unnecessarily offensive, abrasive bits had taken center stage.

The movie sags greatly in this middle half, but picks up again once our heroes are forced to exit the house after a truly hilarious exorcism scene, the best in the entire film. The final act of the movie is inconsequential but much less infuriating and thus a considerable success.

Also Emma Watson is the best.

For the most part, the actors are solid, the standout being Jonah Hill as a hilariously sycophantic toady and the worst being Danny McBride as all of the worst qualities of humanity rolled into one doughy ball.

And despite the infrequent truly hilarious scenes and the thankfully not overwhelmingly intolerable bad ones, there is a heart buried deep in there, the core story arc being Seth and Jay struggling to repair their  fizzling friendship. It's no Old Yeller, but it's more heartfelt than most of any of these actors' entire output put together.

Overall, This Is the End is breezy entertainment that deserves more laughs than cringes, especially considering the fact that it's essentially a silly celebrity YouTube video with a $30 million budget. 

Yes, that comes with its flaws, but such an idiosyncratic project should be embraced in today's cinematic climate. I mean a movie that contains a lengthy reference to The Exorcist and a fully choreographed Backstreet Boys performance within half an hour of each other is to be cherished. And though it isn't the crown jewel of comedy, such an eccentric little film is welcome in an age of bland blockbuster flops and endlessly manipulated, committee-mandated sequels. This Is the End is a fluke; a strange and mostly accidental byproduct of a waning studio system, but a charming one nonetheless.

TL;DR: This Is the End isn't exactly funny enough to earn its dizzyingly high concept, but it's a quirky and fun meta film.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1296