Strays lands mixed Rotten Tomatoes score as first reviews arrive
Strays, the new film starring Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx, has landed a mixed Rotten Tomatoes score as the first reviews have arrived.
The comedy film sees Ferrell voice the role of Reggie, a dog who is abandoned on the street by his rude owner, Doug (Will Forte).
After scouring the streets to try get home, Reggie becomes friends with Bug (Foxx), Maggie (Isla Fisher) and Hunter (Randall Park), and alongside a host of other stray dogs, they aim to enact their revenge on Doug.
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With the film being released tomorrow (August 18), the first critics reviews have made their way to Rotten Tomatoes, with the score currently sitting at 58% from 48 reviews.
Below you can read a selection of critics comments, which aren't entirely praising the new film:
"There are laughs to be had here, yes, but your mileage will vary depending on your tolerance for sophomoric bathroom humour and gratuitous vulgarity. The actors providing the voice talent are expressive and help sell the gags, such as they are. But all the cast, not to mention the audience, deserves better material."
"Ferrell narrates the film like a peppy children’s TV show, and in fact the whole thing feels like an R-rated kids movie. Like all gross-out comedies, that sense of immaturity runs through the whole film, and the comedy delights in the lowbrow, rolling around in it like a dog rolling around in its own doo-doo. An exuberantly bad-taste ode to our poochy pals. Dumb & Dumber, but for dogs."
"Cuddly, and for kids, this assuredly is not. It's the crudest comedy of the year – roughly, Jackass for canines, with all the genitalia and poo-based punchlines that might imply. It's also wildly uneven, and sometimes simply too gross for its own good, doubling down on the filthiest things dogs love doing. But when the laughs do land – with a kind of dazed idiocy – it finds a pretty entertaining sweet spot."
"Even with its brief 93-minute running time, Strays feels thin and repetitive; after all, there are only so many times you can laugh at, say, a dog happily eating another's dog vomit. But the film nonetheless delivers plenty of laughs, making up for many of its clunkers through sheer volume and the talents of its starry voice cast."
"Strays is nominally funny, but in a way that rarely provokes genuine laughs, just chuckles of appreciation. It's a breezy, inconsequential film that will drip from the wrinkles of your brain like slobber from a chew toy. It's just hard not to shake the feeling that there should have been a hilarious squeaker hidden amongst all the mildly amusing fluff."
"This is not, to reiterate, a sophisticated film. You'll need to have a high tolerance for swearing, knob gags and bodily fluids... There's something weirdly admirable, though, about [Josh Greenbaum, director]'s determination to push things up to, and in some cases past, the boundary of good taste."
Strays is released in UK and US cinemas on August 18.
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