ADAM MEMBREY

Far From the Wurst, But Still Hard to Digest: Sausage Party

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There is one key takeaway from this movie: it’s not enough to have a bunch of food items swear the whole movie if they’re not actually saying anything funny.

FOOD + SWEARING = COMEDY GOLD

^^^^The above equation only works for about 3-5 minutes, tops. An entire movie? That’s stretching it even more than your average sausage casing.

Beyond that, there are two huge faults with the movie that keep it from reaching the epic classicness the film clearly wants to reach for:

1) No message is fun to listen to if it’s one note played over and over and over.

2) Pointing something out without extending on it is not smart. It’s showing off. And the look-at-that-annoying-kid kind of showing off.

The first problem: the movie tries to go with a really subversive idea that the Great Beyond the food actually dream (and sing!) of is going into the mouths of hungry Americans. In other words: Heaven is a literally grind of the teeth. Followed by saliva. Followed by digestion and other heartless, disgusting processes. The food, however, have no idea the story they’ve been sold their whole lives is a complete lie.

It doesn’t take more than a few seconds to realize what they’re trying to say. It’s obvious this film is a comment on religion in general, but what it sorely misses is a counterpoint in any way, shape, or form. The movie never bothers to show how believing the lie is actually something good or helpful. In the minds of the writers, the lie is good for absolutely nothing. It’s playing one shrieking note over and over again.

Contrast that with This is the End, which riffed on The Rapture (and the subsequent Apocalypse). What the film does so well is that it treats the Rapture straight, as if all the religious stories are really happening. The great twist is that even the nonbelievers can get in if they do something truly good and selfless for someone else. It takes a very common Christian value and makes it clear that ANYONE – including those who believe smoking weed and playing video games is about as good as Life gets, and who generally don’t care for a huge swath of Earth’s population – can get into Heaven. It took an idea and made a commentary on it. It recontextualized a common belief into something far richer and deeper. And it did it all within the framework of a movie full of comedians swearing, smoking weed, and doing tons of stupid shit.

So I know the writing team is capable of doing something a movie like Sausage Party badly needs. They just forgot to pack those ingredients into their menu. They forgot to add some jalapeno and cheddar to the sausage, if you will. They forgot to provide vegetarian and vegan options. And they forgot that some people just don’t want anything to do with sausage and that’s totally their right. (Okay, this metaphor is getting out of control).

The other thing Sausage Party does it is brings up all kinds of things like a proud 7th grader yelling, “See! I TOLD YOU studying on the night before the test would pay off! I REMEMBER THIS STUFF!“. The problem with studying the night before the test is that you may remember the names and important dates, but you lose the story behind them. You lose context and meaning. And when you lose the story, you don’t have the material you need to recontextualize it into something interesting and insightful. As a result, we get a mention of the Palestine-Israeli conflict, but with no actual comment on it. We get mentions of Nazi Germany, Native Americans, and African-American culture, as well, but, again, with no additional comment or point of view being made.

As a result, Sausage Party came out with all the attention and fanfare of HOLY SHIT, can you believe they actually pulled this off? We marveled at how they could make a pretty decently animated movie for such a low cost (it would take a trained movie eye to see just how they did it so cheaply – something they later got in trouble for), and that they even made the darn thing without getting sued through their eyeballs. But after its release, it quickly faded from the conversation, and I imagine the reason is this: nobody wants to have their head beaten with a message, listen to swearing with no comedy or real punch line, or endure a hyperactive, slacking 7th-grader bragging\
 about whatever names and dates he remembered for 90 minutes straight. There are some good jokes and clever gags – how could there not be? – but there’s not enough for a full, satisfying meal.

Drive It Like You Stole It: ‘Sing Street’

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Back in 2005, John Carney’s Once burned a filmic trail based almost purely on word of mouth. I sang its praises. I told everyone I knew to see it, whether or not I thought they’d actually like it because I knew they would have a friend who could use the recommendation. I learned all the songs, most especially “Falling Slowly” and “Lies” (the ultimate sing-it-at-the-top-of-your-lungs car song), and immersed myself in the music in all kinds of ways. While the story had a simple beauty to it, it was undeniably charged by the fact that the actors had a real-life relationship and even toured together. It felt like one of those stories we dream of – where music heals and helps you find that perfect love and everything works out as it’s supposed to.

But what I think myself and many others forget is that the movie didn’t exactly end with a happy ending. They didn’t end up together. Their lives were far too complicated for such a solution. Music brought them together, but it didn’t solve everything. Instead, it gave them some powerful moments that reinvigorated the rather dull, aimless lives they felt they were leading. It set them right, even as it set them apart.

Carney’s latest, the fantastic Sing Street (currently streaming on Netflix) continues that sentiment. The characters – from the main to the secondary – all are dealing with some really difficult Life Stuff. They are living in an 80’s Dublin that’s already dealing with economic strife, on top of smaller, more personal issues of divorce, controlling schools, disgusting authority figures, and people far more ready to kick than support a dream. Conor starts a band simply to impress a girl, and you know what? It works. He doesn’t just impress her, but his songs seem to bring out something in her she’s often kept locked away. She often cries to the songs. She goes for long walks in the park. She sits with it and lets it sink in like any great song can.

This is a movie not so much about the healing power of music but how it can provide that perfect momentary escape. For all the lads in the band, every time they play a song, the daily bullshit they have to deal with is temporarily held at bay. They play with such joy because, really, the alternative is far less joyous. We get to see them when they just start out, fumbling through chords and tweaked lyrics, to the final school concert in which they break everything out with confidence and catharsis. They really, truly look like they’re having the time of their lives, and their final song is a defiant shout against a truly troubling incident Will went through early on. You can see all the ways music adds value to their lives, and how it energizes and bolsters them in ways that sometimes carry offstage and sometimes remain.

I found myself utterly transfixed with this group of oddballs. I imagine Carney would have no problem suggesting this is The Commitments with younger protagonists and for a new generation, right down to the plot of making the school bully/hothead a part of the team by the end. Carney doesn’t gloss over the pain. We truly see how desperate and shitty the lives of our characters can be – especially Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) and Ann (Kelly Thornton) – but we also see how hopeful they are at the end, literally riding into choppy waters in search of something greater.

I have to give special mention to Jack Raynor, who I easily dismissed after he became Another Actor in a Transformers Movie. Brendan is Conor’s older brother, cynical yet deeply caring of his brother in a way that’s not always obvious. He’s a man who knows he missed a boat and can’t quite seem to work up the courage to risk everything again. So he funnels his energy – as support when the divorce goes down and as music critic – into his younger brother, leading to a beautiful moment at the end where he is so, so happy to see someone – even if it is not him – risking their lives to follow their dreams.

Do All Animators Go to the Same Bar?

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Spoiler alert: these guys chased dogs more than they drove.

This is an old post from July. Let’s pretend it’s still July 2016:

I saw The Secret Life of Pets a couple weeks ago, and as the film hurtled towards it’s big action climax, the details felt more and more familiar. Where had I seen this before? The animals are trapped in a van. They need to get out. The only option is to commandeer the vehicle. This involves lots of wayward driving – if I can accept a talking animal than I guess I should accept a driving animal, too – and leads to the van going off a major bridge and nearly plunging into the water. I say nearly because of course the van has to be suspended in its fall for just enough time before it plunges into the deeper, darker waters of New York City below. Spoiler alert: the animals make it out alive despite not having the opposable thumbs necessary to unlock things.

Another spoiler alert: this is almost the exact same ending as Finding Dory.

Boy, the really make toys for anything these days, uh?

In Finding Dory, our lovable protagonists are also stuck in a van. They’re going the wrong way  – away from their new home – and need to self-correct, so they commandeer the vehicle. Dogs driving a van is not that that far a bridge to cross (almost literally) – so obviously an octopus driving a van is just as believable. Again, there is wayward driving that sends plenty of cars flying in the wrong direction (they could softly crash-land the van from 30 feet up on the pile of insurance money that needed to be paid out for those numerous accidents) and eventually leads to the van flying back into the ocean. All the characters, despite not having opposable thumbs, hands, or even paws, make it out alive.

So my question is this: how is it possible for two major animation releases from two different studios – released less than a month apart – to have almost the exact same climax? It’s oddly specific. One happens in New York City and the other in Monterey, CA. One van falls of the bridge while the other flies off the highway before hitting the ocean. Those are about the only two differences. Additionally, everyone knows that these animated movies take a long time to make. Even if Illumination Entertainment has found a way to make their movies in a more abbreviated, cost-effective manner, you’re still looking at a 3 to 4 year project.

Illumination’s headquarters are in Santa Monica, California. Pixar’s are in Emeryville, California. That’s a separation of approximately 372 miles and at least 6-7 hours of intermittently angry driving in traffic.

A similar thing happened not long ago when Despicable Me 2 came out in July 2013 and The Penguins of Madagascar a year and a half later in November 2014. With Despicable Me 2, a key plot point involved the Minions being transformed into these purple, totally-not-cuddly rage monsters. The success of the mission depended on not only avoiding these purple nasties, but in transforming them back to their yellow, pleasantly banana-crazy selves. Not quite a year and a half later, Penguins of Madagascar had a key plot point about the cute penguins becoming hilariously ugly, somewhat violent penguins and needing to be transformed back. How did two major releases have such similar ending plots? Again, the mechanics of a slow-paced animation process make it unlikely the latter tried to copy a former’s major plot point, but is 15 months possibly juuust enough time to do so?

But this Dory and Pets situation? Freaky. I can only imagine that at some point both Pixar and Illumination found themselves stuck and unsure of just how to get their characters from one point to another in a relatively quick manner. Especially since, you know, they didn’t have the necessary opposable thumbs to pull off some badass stuff. I especially believe Pixar found themselves incredibly stuck because the amount of rampage the van causes on the highway is so mind-boggling as to not only be un-Pixar-like but to completely take me out of the film. I had no room to cry about Dory’s happy ending when my brain was crammed with hundreds of hypothetical insurance bills (and possible if not definite injuries or deaths to innocent bystanders. Can you tell I cared a lot about the insurance money? I must be a grownup now).

So what if a key story person from Pixar, frustrated and unable to poop out a great connecting plot point, took a drive to Yosemite National Park to free the mind? And what if another key story person, from Illumination, took the same trip? What if they ran into each other on the same boulder as they tried to take the best sun-soaked photo to post to their various social media apps? Seems crazy, right?

What if there is an absolutely breathtaking bar halfway between the two cities? Where people can get away and drink themselves into realizing the meaning of life?

A solid halfway point just off of I-5 is Kettleman City, CA. The best place there – according to my own rash, highly uninformed Google search –  is Bravo Farms, which not only offers great beer, but ice cream. There is also farm life around which is perfect because, really, how often do Pixar and Illumination not have animals in their movies? Maybe seeing some odd interaction between the animals will lead to a kernel of inspiration that leads to a delicious bite of storytelling popcorn.  And then you can grab a solid, delicious ice cream to reward yourself for pooping out that great, much-needed story point.

I don’t know. It’s not clear how it happened. Even weirder – at least to me – is how at some point in Secret Life of Pets two dogs have a literal sausage party of a dream, and there is an entire animated Sausage Party movie that came out just yesterday. Of course, the context of their sausage party (dogs love sausages, as the movies teach us, and they can’t stop thinking about them) is entirely, irrevocably different from the context of Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill’s Sausage Party.

But what if. What if an animator/story person from Pixar, an animator/story person from Illumination, and an animator/story person from Sausage Party‘s Nitrogen Studios (headquartered in Vancouver, B.C., Canada) went to the same animation program? They’re old classmates and they all chat over Skype whenever they’re stuck. Pixar and Illumination tend to do all the talking, stressing over the key story points without being too specific, talking about the pressures of holding up entire studios because live-action blockbusters are just so much more miss than hit these days. All of this is happening while Nitrogen, in his smug, Gilfoyle-like way sits and listens with his arms-crossed, proud of the fact that he doesn’t have the same problems they do. Nitrogen knows his shit. He knows what he’s doing. His movie is solid and subversive. It will make everyone see food in truly new and disgusting ways. And because Nitrogen tends to sit there and listen, barely getting in a word or even an idea, Illumination will wake up one morning with vague thoughts of a sausage party, laugh to himself for thinking how subversive it is to have cute dogs dream of actual sausage parties, and the rest will be history.

My point is this: animation is literally a limitless field. It can do and be anything. But it is still at its heart a tool for a great story. How these intricate moviemaking machines can have thousands of individual machinations a day and still come up with something eerily similar is not only odd, but a bit disheartening. At least they, with their ever-evolving animation, make it look good.

The Lasting Power of Tiny Honest Moments: ‘Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates’

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Let me get this out of the way: Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is absolutely, gleefully R-rated. There is no joke too tasteless or visual gag too gross. Everything is out on the table, with it being very much a throw-everything-in-the-kitchen-at-the-wall-and-oh-hell-who-cares-if-anything-sticks effort. Everyone in the movie goes absolutely balls-out, including the MVP foursome of Adam Devine, Zac Efron, Aubrey Plaza, and the scrappy little nobody herself Anna Kendrick. Efron, as we should know by now, is some kind of national treasure. I almost think his muscles are distracting everyone from his incredible comic ability. Devine delivers a go-for-broke comedic performance that reminds me of Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura 2 in that there is no crazy face or idea he won’t explore at least once.

Beyond how hilarious this movie is, it does serve as a reminder that sometimes a little emotional through-line, regardless of how small or reaching, can make a huge difference.

The gist of the movie is that Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) are not only brothers but absolute pros at ruining every party they go to. They arrive stag, probably sleep with half the women, and inevitable cause some kind of destruction or injury. But this time: it’s their little sister’s wedding. They can’t screw up this time, their father demands. They must find nice girls to take to a beautiful destination wedding.

While the movie finds Mike and Dave struggling to make their alcohol-selling business work, Alice (Anna Kendrick) and Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) are also struggling to make their reality something closer to their dreams. They see this opportunity to join Mike and Dave as a way to take a break from their disappointing-thus-far lives and have a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The real emotional crux of the movie doesn’t reveal itself until deep into the story when Dave and Alice are walking through the Hawaiian woods, spitting out random ideas for Dave’s drawing projects, until Dave says:

Dave: “Do you ever get that feeling… that you’re not good enough to get what you really want… so you’re too scared to try?

Alice: “All the time.”

Dave: “Really?”

Alice: “Like, all the time. It’s terrifying. –

Dave: “It is, it’s terrifying.”

Alice: “Yeah. You’re, like, stuck.

Dave: “Totally.”

Alice: “Yeah.”

In the next 5-10 years, I imagine this movie will become something of a cult classic among millennials. It’s full of great to good to godawfully tastless jokes from start to finish, but that extra emotional string – something that everything can relate to – will make it stick to the wall just a little longer than most of the jokes.

Give It A Chance: ‘Maggie’s Plan’

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MAGGIE’S PLAN, from left: Travis Fimmel, Greta Gerwig, 2015. ph: Jon Pack/© Sony Pictures Classics

 

Maggie’s Plan opens quickly with its central conflict: Maggie (Greta Gerwig) is a young college professor looking to have a child, but with no real successful relationship to bolster it. So she has a solution: she’s got an old college friend willing to donate his sperm, and she’ll raise the child as a single mom.

The plan begins falling in place, like dominoes gently bumping into each other, until Maggie meets another professor, John (Ethan Hawke), who’s struggling to write his Next Great American Novel. She reads the first chapter, gives him the feedback he’s been longing for, and off they go. There’s just one problem: he’s married. With kids. She doesn’t realize that she’s not only inspiring him, but also giving him the attention his rising academic star Georgette  (Julianne Moore) can’t seem to afford him.

I’m not going to give away what happens, but I will say there is a point where Maggie realizes the romantic ideals she had may no longer hold weight. What began as a torrid love affair in which she inspired him to write the book he always felt he had in him – so romantic! – has been brushed with the banality and reality of family life a few too many times. At a certain point, Maggie wonders if she’s made a mistake. We don’t often see regret and the genuine inner crisis it births in movies. Often it’s glossed over. And even when Maggie’s Plan threatens to lean into a romantic triangle with way too tidy of an ending, it always, always remains true to the characters. Even the most ridiculous notions have their own internal logic to them, which makes them much easier to swallow. We may not agree with it, but we understand where they’re coming from.

The most jaw-dropping moment to me – the one I’m still thinking about months later – takes place only 20 minutes into the movie. The sperm donor friend Maggie has arranged for – a rather intense, quiet man with a burgeoning pickle business (no joke) – is about to take the donor container into the bathroom and take care of business. Just before he shuts the door, Maggie asks him – a former college math major – why he never became a mathematician.

Guy: I liked math because it was beautiful, that’s all. I never wanted to be a mathematician.

Maggie: Really? You think math is beautiful?

Guy: Anyone who’s touched even a hem of that garment knows it’s beautiful. For me, the hem was enough. Couldn’t have taken the frustration.

Maggie: What do you mean?

Guy: Never seeing the whole thing. You’re always just getting these glimpses of the whole picture. Spending my whole life for scraps of truth.

It sounds like a well-written throwaway mini-monologue, and I’m honestly shocked it’s not something that’s been picked up on or written about elsewhere (the fact the film only grossed $3,070 at the box office probably has something to do with it). But it says everything about the movie. It encapsulates the message in a few short lines from the mouth of a character that nobody – not Maggie, not even the audience – takes seriously.

You can see Maggie struggle throughout the film with never seeing the whole thing. She thinks she knows what a happy family and relationship knows and feels like. She thinks she knows what it takes to get there. But it’s not worked out at all the way she imagined. She’s just getting glimpses of the whole picture; she’s scrapping for truth in real and painful ways. Georgette and John, in their own ways, are also scrapping for these bits of truth. They thought their marriage was terrible, and it, oddly enough, took an affair to realize that maybe they weren’t as far off the mark as they thought.

And so it’s fitting, with her final shots, that director Rebecca Miller reintroduces this odd, rather deep man into the story, right at the last moment when happiness seems to be just around the corner and coming up the hill.

Still available for rent at Redbox and on iTunes.