Sausage Party (2016) *

Directed by:  Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan

Starring:  (voices of)  Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Edward Norton, Bill Hader, Jonah Hill, Nick Kroll, Michael Cera

We have singing, doubles entendre, sexual innuendo, gross-out humor, and naturally, weed smoking (considering Seth Rogen and company are involved) in Sausage Party, but what we don't have is laughs.   This stuff is supposed to create amusement and chuckles, and yet there are none to be found.    Sausage Party opens with a musical number featuring food items dancing and singing about going to the "Great Beyond", not knowing of course that such a place means they are goners.   
The number drones on seemingly endlessly, and puts the movie behind the eight-ball.    It doesn't recover and actually finds ways to get worse from there.

The participants in Sausage Party are hot dogs, buns, bagels, flatbread, etc. who are excited when the doors open at the supermarket where they reside for the July 4th sale.    Like lonely puppies, they ache to be thrown into a shopping cart and taken away to what they think is paradise.    A hot dog named Frank (Rogen), doesn't want to go just yet, mostly because he is in love with a hot dog bun named Brenda (Wiig).   He wants to get inside her, since hot dogs and buns go together.    Brenda and Frank are accompanied by Sammy Bagel Jr. (Norton-doing a Woody Allen impression) and other assorted drinks, vegetables, candy, etc. on an adventure which we don't much care about.

The plot isn't really the reason anyone would want to see Sausage Party.    Those with the sense of humor of a ten-year-old will be amused (maybe), and laugh because they figured out just what Frank and Brenda want to do with each other.    But, would a ten-year-old understand the villainous douche?    Or even what a douche is for?   Or, excuse me, feminine hygiene product.   I picture Rogen and Jonah Hill, who co-wrote the script with longtime Rogen collaborator Evan Goldberg, cracking themselves up at the thought of a, ahem, feminine hygiene product regaining its strength by sucking the liquid out of an open juice box at a strategic point on its "body".    They might be the only ones amused.    Sophomoric humor can be funny, but not when its goal is to amuse the filmmakers more than the audience.    More to the point, aren't these guys getting a little old for this shit?