The premise of the Sausage Party is taking the formula applied by Pixar of giving feelings to inanimate objects like cars and transferring that to the food we eat.
Seth Rogen is the voice of Frank, the sausage who comes to realize that when humans get groceries they’re not taking them to the great beyond but rather to kill and eat them.
There is also a bagel character, another hot dog, a bun and a jar of mustard who is dealing with PTSD.
An article in Slate says the question of food having feelings is not messed up because food was once alive, a fact Sausage Party doesn’t acknowledge.
The movie makes no distinction between foods that come from animals—creatures with brains and a capacity for pain—and foods that come from plants. At no point does the film nod to the fact that hot dogs are gelatinous meat sticks composed of a substance that usually comes from cows or pigs, two intelligent and empathetic creatures that often endure “a horrible existence” before they’re slaughtered for meat.
When asked by a Vice reporter whether they’d go vegetarian after making the movie, Rogen and Goldberg brushed the question off:
Even vegetables have feelings in our world,” said Rogen. “Vegans are murderers, just like everyone else,” added Goldberg.
The movie has even caused a rift with the animators. According to the Province, the animators on the show were not paid what they should have been to work on the movie.
Sausage Party, according to Slate, is an impassioned cry for rationality in the face of narrow-mindedness and superstition.
Frank spends most of the movie trying to educate foods who are too sheltered and uncritical to realize that there’s a world of violence beyond the supermarket.
