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Review of Sausage Party (Christopher Lennertz/Alan Menken)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you have a proven track record of appreciating the
best parody soundtracks of both song and score, Sausage Party
truly one of the most entertaining such whirlwind musical experiences of
the decade.
Avoid it... if you expect anything here to appropriately appeal to your young children, because the highlighted Alan Menken song is deliciously vile and profane while Christopher Lennertz's score is aimed more at savvy film score collectors ready to deconstruct the work's intelligent web of references.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Sausage Party: (Christopher Lennertz/Alan Menken)
Offensive animated films aimed squarely at adults are a rare breed in
Hollywood, but 2016's successful outrage Sausage Party proved the
idea not only viable but capable of perfectly merging ridiculously
adolescent humor and thoughtful socio-political commentary. The first
major animated movie ever to initially receive the NC-17 rating (before
the filmmakers removed depictions of pubic hair to achieve solely an R
rating), Sausage Party was both a fiscal and critical success,
overcoming not only its sick, raunchy humor but the labor dispute that
resulted when nearly half of the animators on the project complained
that the directors forced them to work overtime hours without pay; all
of these artists were reportedly struck consequently from the credits of
the film and told they would be blacklisted. That unfortunate
circumstance aside, Sausage Party is a surprisingly intelligent
commentary about religious tolerance wrapped into its overly juvenile,
sexual outer shell. The anthropomorphic food items of a supermarket are
revealed to all have their own cultures and interest in sex with each
other, most of them seeing the shoppers as gods that can take them to
the "great beyond." As the reality of their existence begins to dawn on
them, they decide to overcome their own differences to wage war against
the humans who they suspect might kill them in terrifying ways. The
soundtrack for the film is littered with amusing food-related songs of
varying fame, applied for purposes of satire conveniently throughout.
The original music in Sausage Party is helmed by parody expert
Christopher Lennertz, veteran of some of the industry's most
accomplished genre scores of the prior ten years. His mastery of
providing totally serious dramatic scores for insanely stupid comedies
is perhaps his best calling card, and he is in top form in Sausage
Party. A pleasant wrinkle is introduced in an original song from
Alan Menken of Disney fame. The popular songwriter rarely wrote entire
scores for pictures in the 2010's, but he would occasionally lend a song
to a film, and his contribution to this one, "The Great Beyond," exposes
his own Marc Shaiman-like sense of humor and outwardly pilfers his
classic 1990's Disney song style in a profanity-laced environment.
Lennertz adapts the melody from Menken's song throughout his score,
adding a few more themes for specific characters along the way.
To dismiss the soundtrack for Sausage Party as mere comedic fluff will be tempting for most listeners, but the combined work of Menken and Lennertz is really quite brilliant and deserves recognition as a pinnacle of the parody genre. The personality of Menken's song is specifically meant to plunder the aspirational, religious tone of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, opening its sung portions with passages that could very well fit into the mold of the 1996 Disney film. Of course, its initial lyrics are "Oh, shit!," and the song is eventually reamed through a whirlwind of worldly and music genre sidebars before achieving the type of show-stopping Menken finale anyone would expect from him. Most importantly, the major-key demeanor of the song's progressions and inflections keep it hopelessly upbeat, meeting all your expectations of a usual Menken hero affair, and Lennertz carefully extends this exact, piano-led personality in the theme throughout the more hopeful character portions of his score. Look for the adaptation of Menken's melody to exist everywhere in the score, from the sentimentally sappy "Chosen," which emulates Menken's own orchestrations in stride, to the opening of "Big Speech," which takes the theme into noble Jerry Goldsmith territory with an openly defiant fanfare. You can pinpoint a plethora of obvious parody nods by Lennertz to other famous film composers, including Maurice Jarre, Bernard Herrmann, Elmer Bernstein, Basil Poledouris, James Horner, Michael Giacchino, and David Arnold, among others that might be missed upon casual observation. Only occasionally, and usually in either the bridge sections of his cues or the instrumental colors and their mixing (the electric guitar passages, most specifically), do you hear pieces of Lennertz own typical devices. Otherwise, Sausage Party is a potentially headache-inducing parade of inspirational references, some of them a little more obtuse. These are all entertaining on their own, but perhaps the best specific little moments in the score come when Lennertz reaches back for his own propulsive action style, as heard in the middle of "The Big Fight," though even this material is influenced by Poledouris to an extent. The handling of percussion in Sausage Party is particularly notable, as its positioning in the mix is outstanding and recalls the best of Alan Silvestri's more brutally slapping and pounding environments. The later action cues in this work are especially filled to the brim with enticing percussive mayhem. As intelligently as Lennertz handles both Menken's melody and the outward references to others' works in Sausage Party, his score does set aside time to develop its own set of themes, including ideas for romance and horror. The human "villain" of the story is provided a treacherous motif in "Darren, the Dark Lord," and the grocery item "villain," a woman's sanitary product, is presented with an equally oppressive idea in "Douche Loses It." Look for especially the latter to do battle with Menken's main theme later in the score. The music's ethnic element, addressing all the world foods, is highlighted by "Our Heroes," which follows the obligatory Lawrence of Arabia reference with a trip through Native American, Middle Eastern, and East Indian motifs. In "He's Coming," the Latin influences arrive with Robert Rodriquez-like attitude (and one of the two villain themes in tow), and these are more frequently reprised later in the work. A few standout parody applications are of such quality in Sausage Party that they deserve special recognition. First is the rousing David Arnold-inspired fantasy adaptation of the Menken theme in "Food Massacre" before the cue abruptly transitions to Herrmann and Goldsmith horror mode, the latter's The Omen score poked with Latin lyrics involving the eternal damnation of various food items. There's a fair amount of Star Trek love in this score as well, the Giacchino fanfare style briefly stated in "Magical Sausage" and a mixture of Horner and Goldsmith final frontier techniques exposed late in "We're Home," a fantastic cue all around. Aside from the "Magnificent Seven" portion in the cluster of action material between "Big Speech" and "Finale," there is an abundance of more modern action devices heard, including the bulk of the Goldsmith heroism, Poledouris rawness, Silvestri rhythms, and Arnold fantasy. Unfortunately, the rip of Brad Fiedel's famed theme from The Terminator didn't seem to make the soundtrack's album. Otherwise, however, the product is highly entertaining even with its expected switches between cultural modes as necessary. Like any parody work, it is head-spinning listening experience, but listeners prepared for a little deconstruction along with their enjoyment factor will appreciate just how funny and intelligent this score's constructs really are. The previously existing songs, most of which appear in the film, are appropriately food related as well, making the entire product a strong souvenir from the concept. From Lennertz, smart parody entries like Sausage Party are no surprise, but to hear Menken's own humor in the mix solidifies the easy recommendation of this album. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 72:25
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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