The first word uttered in “Sausage Party” is a popular synonym for excrement, which is a bit counterintuitive. In a movie about food, you’d expect that to come at the end. But while the next 88 minutes supply plenty of scatology — including a blessedly discreet toilet-paper joke — this potty-mouthed movie has higher matters in mind. You will come for the kind of humor promised in the title and the well-earned R rating, but stay for the nuanced meditations on theology and faith.The opening barrage of profanity serves as a tactical warning to parents who might have wandered in with their kids on the assumption that this was a cute little cartoon about the secret lives of groceries. Which it is, actually. But if you do bring the little ones — not that I condone it! — you may have to answer questions not only about what all those veggies and snacks are doing during the extended supermarket orgy scene, but also about the existence of God. In adult company, you might find yourself debating whether the film is a Christopher Hitchens-style atheist polemic or a more pragmatic, William Jamesian exploration of the varieties of religious experience.
I won’t spoil that one for you. In a nutshell — in a brightly colored, economy-size value pack — “Sausage Party” traces the dialectic of enlightenment in the life of a skeptical sausage named Frank. Voiced by Seth Rogen in his usual growly, loud-Canadian manner, Frank starts out as a true believer. At the beginning of every day, the groceries sing a hymn (by Alan Menken) praising “the gods” who will escort the chosen foodstuffs into “the great beyond.” Since the Fourth of July is approaching, Frank and his buddies think their turn is coming, which means that Frank and his girlfriend, a comely bun named Brenda (Kristen Wiig), will at last be able to shed their packaging and consummate their relationship.The gods, needless to say, are ordinary human shoppers, and the glorious apotheosis they bring to Frank and Brenda’s friends and neighbors is painful, brutal death. But the innocent condiments, meat products, beverages and specialty foods who populate the store’s garish and crowded aisles don’t know that.
They think nirvana awaits beyond the cash registers. Not that ignorance is bliss, exactly. There are schisms and antagonisms based on territory and belief — most piquantly represented by the enmity between a bagel (Edward Norton) and a lavash (David Krumholtz) — and a repressive sexual morality underwritten by fear of the gods. But then Frank — and, separately, his pal Barry (Michael Cera) — glimpse the truth, aided by a problematically branded bottle of liquor (Bill Hader) and a wad of chewed gum (Scott Underwood). The truth is horrible. Think for a moment about how we must look to the food we eat. After such knowledge, what forgiveness? But if the gods are really monsters and the great beyond is a killing field, what is to be done? “Sausage Party” was directed by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan from a script by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. Like “This Is the End,” Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Rogen’s 2013 apocalypse comedy, it embraces the darkness of its premise and answers despair with bursts of nasty, knowing silliness.
Cleverly animated by Nitrogen Studios, the movie abounds with quick visual and verbal gags. There are also more extended feats of Rabelaisian bawdiness, most memorably the villainous feminine hygiene product voiced by Nick Kroll. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it poke at Pixar both acknowledges an obvious debt to the “Toy Story” movies and emphasizes the philosophical challenge that “Sausage Party” marshals against them. This is more than a matter of answering sweetness with swear words. The “Toy Story” cycle takes the relationship between people and consumer goods to be essentially harmonious. Buzz and Woody and their friends accept their place in the cosmos, and though there are shadows of doubt and inklings of tragedy in all of the movies, everything unfolds within the parameters of a fundamentally rational and benevolent order. People love their playthings, and the toys love us back.In some ways, “Sausage Party” is closer in spirit to “The Lego Movie,” which raised its own set of metaphysical questions.
But whereas that movie was a Calvinist parable of free will in a determined universe (with no sex or profanity), this one focuses on the disruptive and liberating consequences of scientific thought. Frank is a Promethean figure, and what happens once the gods are overthrown is scary and unsettling as well as fun. The movie, I’m happy to report, is fun pretty much all the way through. In Judd Apatow’s “Funny People,” Mr. Rogen’s character is asked (by James Taylor, no less) if he ever gets tired of making jokes about his penis. The answer was and remains no, but “Sausage Party” — a title that could apply to most of the movies on Mr. Rogen’s résumé — nonetheless signals something of a recovery from the manic exhaustion of “This Is the End.” It’s still grounded in elemental man-child humor, full of homosexual panic, body image anxiety and the fear of women’s bodies. But it also has the chaotic verve and the formal discipline that any good cartoon requires.
Animation offers Mr. Rogen, Mr. Goldberg and their squad new ways to be naughty, and also blunts the potential offensiveness of some of the older ways. Since ethnic stereotypes figure so heavily in retail branding and advertising, the spicy taco (voiced by Salma Hayek) and the neurotic bagel can be interpreted as satirical jabs at the food industry rather than insults aimed at groups of actual people. Maybe you will say the same about the effeminate Twinkie (Mr. Underwood) and the African-American box of grits (Craig Robinson), or maybe you won’t, but chances are you will laugh anyway. I did, without much guilt.And with, I have to say, quite a bit of respect for the intellectual rigor of a project that probably didn’t require it. I went in expecting an earnest critique of the industrial food system, or an impassioned plea for ethical vegetarianism. But I certainly didn’t anticipate a movie so full of … thought. “Sausage Party” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).