Eat before you see ‘Sausage Party,’ a cartoon that’s not for kids

Vegans sometimes say they won’t eat food with a face. But what if all your food was suddenly looking right back at you?

If you’ve seen the trailer with a potato screaming as its skin is flayed, you know the premise of the R-rated animated comedy “Sausage Party”: The world is a grocery store, its citizens foodstuffs. They’re divided by aisle and by ethnic-food conflicts, but united in a belief in a beatific afterlife in the post-supermarket Great Beyond … and in cursing with a religious fervor. In this universe, every tomato has an incredibly foul mouth (and a damn dirty mind, too). The voices for all the expletives come from a cast of comedy all-stars: Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader and more. Seth Rogen plays a sentient wiener.

The imagination in “Sausage Party” runs rampant, making for moments of the weirdest hilarity. The big opening musical number is an epithet-laden mindblower; the small moment of a jar of peanut butter mourning the loss of his broken jar-of-jelly love is sheer tragicomedy. Turns out food is prone to the same foibles as humanity — the plot involves their awakening to their own irrational religious zealotry, which feels extra pointed this election season. So does a full-scale, not at all bloodless (seedless?) revolution, with the orgiastic element of a radical political movement, um, fully enacted.

Unfortunately, “Sausage Party” bears the marks of a writers’ room full of sentient wieners, too. The two main female characters are a bizarrely buxom hot-dog bun who’s preoccupied with “getting filled” and an oversexed lesbian taco with a Speedy Gonzales accent. So a bunch of men imagine a whole new world, and the only women in it wear high heels (even though they’re food) and think about sex all the time … funny!

And regarding that Speedy Gonzales thing: A lot — a lot — of the movie’s humor derives from “ha-ha” racist stereotypes. These are intentionally over the top, and they’re equal opportunity, including a lavash who thinks he’s getting 72 bottles of extra-virgin olive oil when he goes to the Great Beyond, to (I can’t believe I’m typing this) a box of Mr. Grits, to (again) a bottle of Firewater. But as “Sausage Party” returns to that well for laughs over and over, does it get more funny or profoundly less so? To think of a Trump-state theater, the irony all lost, is chilling.

A circuitous plot contributes to a general sense of confusion. Humans, improbably, can only understand foods’ plight after taking bath salts; the people are the enemy, clearly, but for some reason there’s also an evil, literal douche to defeat. The movie drags at times, when it’s meant to filthily, funnily continue to shock.

But, hey — what if food could talk, and it said funny stuff while cursing like a sailor? That, plus the sex scene (really), make “Sausage Party” one you probably want to attend.