Strays
This shaggy dog tale has some real teeth.
Jamie Foxx, Will Ferrell, Isla Fisher, and Randall Park contemplate life, liberty, and the consumption of mushrooms in the profane Strays.
Reggie the border terrier (Will Ferrell) is living his best life. He loves his owner, Doug (Will Forte), and playing Doug’s favorite game — fetch. Every few days Doug drives Reggie to somewhere in the country, throws a tennis ball, and drives away. It’s Reggie’s job to retrieve the ball and find his way home. When he does, Doug celebrates by yelling expletives at Reggie.
It’s a weird game, sure, but Reggie is thrilled to have such an involved owner.
When Doug drives Reggie hours away, dumping him and the ball in the back alley of a city, the little terrier has his first doubts about Doug’s love. Alone, terrified, and with no clue how to survive, Reggie is saved from a horrible fate by Bug (Jamie Foxx), an aggressive, foul-mouthed Boston terrier. Bug explains to Reggie that Doug isn’t a great owner, he’s an abusive jerk who dumped his dog in the city to die. Though Reggie has a hard time believing his beloved Doug would hurt him, he agrees to let Bug show him the ropes of being a stray.
The duo meets up with Maggie the Australian Shepherd (Isla Fisher) and Hunter the Great Dane (Randall Park), who are experiencing their own version of owner-related strife. The group decides as a whole that humans don’t deserve dogs, especially Reggie’s human. It’s time for revenge. They set out to track down Doug so Reggie can take a bite out of the only thing Doug has ever cared about (hint: It’s not his subscription to the New Yorker).
Can four canine pals survive in the dog-eat-dog world? Is genital-based revenge worth it?
Think of this movie as a South Park version of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey. It’s profane, darkly humorous, filled to the brim with scatological humor, and ultimately kind of…sweet? Strays isn’t going to be for everyone. If you don’t want to look at dog poo or close-ups of dog genitals, then save yourself the pearl-clutching and skip this movie. But for those of us who have a sense of humor that skews toward the outlandish, Strays is an entertaining watch.
Director Josh Greenbaum manages to capture a fundamental truth about dogs: They’re gross. They roll in horrible things, mark items, and eat disgusting stuff. In spite of that, we love them anyway. Greenbaum revels in the dogs’ filthy habits, pushing the limits to the comedic premise. While admittedly, the dog poop humor stinks after a while, Strays has some sublimely dark humor lurking in it. Gross-out humor only works when it’s pushing premises to the limit, and Greenbaum has no problems embracing bad taste and outrageous gambits. There is a particularly inspired bit that involves stuffed bunnies that had our screening audience howling.
Writer Dan Perrault seems to have approached Strays as a parody film. It takes all the familiar elements of movies like A Dog’s Purpose, A Dog’s Way Home, and Dog and tweaks them to absolute absurdity. There’s even a cameo from one of the Dog’s Purpose cast members. And while Perrault skewers tropes like “narration dogs”, he keeps Reggie’s naivety about human cruelty believable and rather sweet. It’s like a dog version of Black Beauty but with pee jokes.
The other boon to this gross-out comedy is a strong voice cast. Ferrell imbues Reggie with charming innocence. It’s heartbreaking to watch him try to argue for his abusive owner when the other dogs push him to see the truth. His greatest desire in life is to finally be considered a good dog. Foxx’s Bug is peak small-dog energy with Axel Foley-esque quips and a willingness to fight just about anything that crosses his path. Both Fisher and Park are also winning in their roles as dogs who wish to be strays since their owners are neglectful and stressful.
Though the movie could have a slightly more biting script — it’s inexcusable that the narration dog bit doesn’t have a callback — Strays is chocked full of juvenile humor and canine charm. If you’ve got the sensibilities of a 9th grader or are a sucker for cute dogs, this movie is an amusing watch.
Verdict: Crude, silly, and ultimately winning, this is a doggone good time.
Strays is rated R and available in theaters August 18.
