Insanely raunchy, and occasionally very funny, “Sausage Party” won't be for everyone. But you could say that about any film featuring a vaginal douche as a villain; a talking used condom with a tale of woe to tell; a tremendous amount of rough language and rough sex, and rough existential reckonings; and a climactic orgy, the foodstuffs of a store called Shopwell's out of their packaging at last.

So it won't be mistaken for “Pete's Dragon” or “The Secret Life of Pets.” I laughed a lot in the first half, before the movie's repetitive jackhammer pacing, which isn't ideal for any kind of comedy, began working against its better instincts. Nonetheless: The script by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir has an inspired stupid idea, and boundless nerve, as well as a legitimate interest in theological debate. Truly, it does. I swear. Along with wiener-in-bun jokes and a lesbian taco shell voiced by Salma Hayek.

It's a quest picture, starring digitally animated consumables bearing nutrition facts labels. Co-writer Rogen voices Frank, stuck his whole life in a shrink-wrapped plastic package with other hot dogs. He longs for his lady friend, a bun named Brenda (Kristen Wiig). The grocery-wide species greet each new day with a song (music by Alan Menken) praising the gods and looking forward to whatever lies in the Great Beyond, reached when the customers wheel the lucky chosen few in a grocery cart of destiny toward … well, they aren't sure.

Then they learn the horrible truth. A bottle of honey mustard (Danny McBride, voice) gets returned to the store, and he's in a traumatized frenzy, babbling about how the gods (humans) out there slice and dice and peel and eat what they buy. The images we see are like splatter-film outtakes. Already in a cart of destiny, Frank and Brenda plot a fast escape, but the mustard kills himself by leaping over the side, causing a mess in the aisle and a bag of flour to burst, which visually references the dust clouds of 9/11, to give you an idea of the sensitivity level at work in “Sausage Party.” A lot of the sexual humor depends on rape or rape-y situations that leave an ashen aftertaste.

“Sausage Party” makes more sense watching it than it does reading somebody's narrative rehash. It's essentially “Bennett Cerf's Treasury of Atrocious Puns” mixed up with Zap Comix and filtered through the arrested-adolescent sensibilities of Rogen and Goldberg.

When Frank and company learn that their entire belief system is a lie, the movie pauses for a surprisingly earnest conversation between hot dog and bun about religion, philosophy and relationships. “This Is the End,” another Rogen/Goldberg comedy featuring (like this one) the talents of Jonah Hill, James Franco, Michael Cera and others, was notably thoughtful about those questions too. That film, a Hollywood apocalypse bash, was far stranger and funnier.

The racial and ethnic stereotypes never stop, to the point that Rogen's Frank notes his own tendency to “make fun of our differences in immature and outdated ways.” The pushier stuff in “Sausage Party” is less like “This Is the End” and more like the forgettable stridency of the Rogen/Goldberg kill-the-North-Korean-leader movie, “The Interview,” the one that caused so much trouble for not much of a comic payoff. Others adore the new one. I'd say “Sausage Party” veers from relentless invention to plain old relentlessness and, when we're lucky, back again.

Michael Phillips is a Chicago Tribune critic.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com