If Pixar’s tendency to emoting any inanimate object seems wild to you, wait till you get to see how the craziness can truly be amplified as the trio of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Jonah Hill make the bonkers decision to not only personify but even sexualize foods in their outlandish R-rated animated movie, Sausage Party (2016), to make some pretty on-point commentary about real-world situations. Even though the movie benefits from all the perversion and scathing satire that acts as a key hook to draw in viewers, the solid narrative foundation is what allows the movie to stand on its own.Â
For an animated R-rated venture, Sausage Party was quite successful, and albeit after a significant time gap, an eight-episode sequel miniseries, Sausage Party: Foodtopia, is going to premiere later this week. To catch up with the events of the original movie, which will be followed up in the series, let us revisit the zany, unabashedly bold story of Sausage Party.
Spoilers Ahead
What Was The Truth About The Great Beyond?
The movie opens in a massive department store called “Shopwell’s,” home to a huge variety of anthropomorphic grocery products. The products considers human customers to be their gods who take them to the ‘Great Beyond’ located on the outside world. The protagonist duo of the movie, Frank the sausage, and Brenda, his hotdog bun girlfriend, desire to be together after being selected by one of the gods and venturing to the Great Beyond together. A deformed, short sausage named Barry, who is Frank’s best friend, fears being discarded in the hell (the trashbin) by the dark lord (store manager Darren) like other unwanted products, but Frank encourages his friend to keep his hopes up for a better future. However, humans are unaware of the fact that these grocery and food items have a life, identity, and personality of their own.Â
A female customer takes Brenda, Frank, and Barry among a whole stock of other grocery items, but trouble arises when she also takes a previously used and returned honey mustard jar named Danny McBride. Danny has seen the Great Beyond and returned, and he knows that contrary to the products’ belief in a heaven, it is a purgatory where they are subjected to vicious tortures before eventually dying and are also used as perverse playthings for pleasure. Danny is unable to share the truth and fails in his efforts to warn his fellow grocery products as well. As a result, the terrified honey mustard chooses to commit suicide instead of returning to the Great Beyond. Frank tries to save Danny but fails, which results in a shopping cart accident that results in the death of a number of grocery products. Brenda chases after Frank, who has already been separated from Barry, and somehow the duo survive. A douche named Douche, who, much like other products, was wishing to visit the Great Beyond, gets his nozzle broken during the accident and gets thrown into the trash. Losing his purpose, Douche becomes infuriated and swears vengeance upon Frank. Douche also gathers his strength by killing and drinking up other liquid products.
Separated from their kin, Frank and Brenda decide to return to their aisle and get companions in the form of Kareem the lavash and Sammy the bagel, members of two rivaling aisles. However, Danny’s warnings about the Great Beyond have been etched into Frank’s mind, and following the late Honey Mustard’s last words, he decides to visit Firewater, an ancient product of the department store who seems to have in-depth knowledge about the human gods and the Great Beyond. Brenda, Sammy, and Kareem wait for Frank as he visits the three immortals/unperishables who have existed in the store since time immemorial: Firewater, Grit Box Mr. Grits, and Twink the Twinkie. Firewater reveals that the decorated myth of the Great Beyond was a lie concocted by the trio to hide the truth about humans and their products in order to maintain peace in the department store. He reveals that unlike the benevolent gods they are considered to be, humans kill and consume the products for their own benefit, and their only destiny is to quench the insatiable hunger of humans. The lie that humans take care of the products after taking them to the other side compounded through the years and offered a sense of relief for the products before they met their gruesome final fate. To verify the truth, the Imperishables ask Frank to venture into the kitchen section to get a good look at reality.
What Did Barry Learn From His Misadventure?
On the other hand, Barry, who had ended up in the house of the female customer, sees the horror unfold in front of him as his fellow grocery products get butchered, peeled, dismembered, and cooked in a horrific manner. Scared out of his wits, Barry manages to escape and gets hitched himself a ride to a junkie’s house. As the junkie gets high on bath salts, he is able to see the living forms of the grocery products. The junkie freaks out as Barry asks for his help to return to his home, and after getting back to his usual self, he tries to cook Barry, only to accidentally die by getting his own head chopped off. At the junkie’s house, Barry meets a wise, all-knowing gum (Stephen Hawking mimicry), and with his and other groceries’ help, the deformed sausage makes his way back to Shopwell’s.
Meanwhile, while waiting for Frank for quite a long time, Brenda, Sammy, and Kareem get lured by Tequila, one of the henchmen of Douche, but the team gets saved after Teresa del Taco rescues them. Frank eventually reunites with his team and reveals the truth about the Great Beyond, but no one, including Brenda, is ready to believe his words. While Brenda wants to return to their aisle, Frank is adamant about showing everyone the truth by venturing into the kitchen section, and this causes a minor falling out between the duo. Motivated by a sense of responsibility, Frank continues his journey anyway, and as he comes across a cookbook in the kitchen section, he witnesses the horrible ways in which humans treat them in the Great Beyond, which proves the words of Danny and Firewater to be true.
Did Frank manage to liberate the foods of Shopwell’s?
To let other food products know the horrific truth, Frank shows them excerpts from the cookbook, which causes a mass panic, and as their belief gets shaken, the loss of purpose prompts the products to denounce Frank’s words as heresy. Barry returns just in time to boost Frank’s morale and reassures him by believing in his words, as he had first-hand experience with the brutality of human beings. Barry has brought Gum and other grocery products from the junkies’ place as well, who drug the customers with bath salts to let them see the products in their true forms. This results in the human customers freaking out, destroying, and devouring the products in a manic state.
The carnage wrought by humans finally convinces the products of the truth in Frank’s words, and under the leadership of Frank and Barry, they decide to stand up against their human oppressors. Putting their differences aside, the products work in unison to kill all the customers present at Shopwell’s. Douche, on the other hand, takes control of Darren and starts terrorizing Frank and co., but with the combined help of Brenda, Barry, Gum, Teresa, and Firewater, Darren and Douche get killed as well in a fiery propane rocket explosion. Finally, Brenda and Frank reconcile with each other and celebrate their reunion by making love, and soon all the products engage in mass organization to commemorate their victory over the human customers.
Later, in a metanarrative twist, Firewater and Gum reveal to Frank and co. that they have learned that all the products are not real. They are in fact cartoons created by other dimensional beings, and Frank and Sammy are modelled upon two such beings namely Seth Rogan and Edward Norton. The sole purpose of their existence is to provide entertainment to these other dimensional being. Gum has managed to create an interdimensional portal to traverse to the world of their creators, and as the movie ends, Frank and his friends decide to confront their makers by stepping over to the other side. In the upcoming miniseries, the implications of their journey will be highlighted, along with other food-related shenanigans, and we can assume a mixed-media (live action combined with animation) adaptation is on the cards.
