Woof! 'Strays' Makes a Mess It Can't Quite Clean Up
If you ever watched Homeward Bound and thought to yourself, "Wow, I wish there was a version of this movie that involved the dogs tripping on mushrooms and hallucinating tornados of pubic hair," then congratulations! There's FINALLY a movie for you. Strays, an anthropomorphic adventure that stars A-list comedians like Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx as foul-mouthed dogs, comes trotting into theaters Aug. 18. Following in the footsteps (paw prints?) of films like Ted, Sausage Party and Good Boys, Strays take seemingly innocent subject matter and injects it with all manner of profane debauchery. An ultra raunchy, hard-R comedy, Strays would send Shadow, Chance and Sassy sprinting back to that waterfall, tails between their legs.
Strays follows the "dog finds its way home" conceit, but ratchets things up with plenty of NSFW flare. Dog owner Doug (Will Forte) is a dumpster of a human being who can't live close to a school zone (i.e. sex offender), spends his days masturbating, and only keeps custody of his dog to spite his ex-girlfriend (who he cheated on). After repeated attempts to ditch his dog Reggie (Ferrell), whom he has christened "s---bag," "dumbass s---bag," and "f--k nugget," he finally dumps the naive pooch in the big city.
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Universal Pictures
In a "the city's are dangerous" PSA, Reggie scampers over "so many needles" as he arrives in a land of dog prostitutes and dog thugs. He quickly meets Bug (Foxx) who takes him under his wing (hind leg?), teaches him valuable lessons ("if you want something, pee on it") and introduces him to his friends, expert sniffer Maggie (Isla Fisher, who can never seem to find a good project despite her talent) and cone-wearing Hunter (Randall Park). After a night of degeneracy that involves terrorizing a local pizza joint and humping garden gnomes, the others convince Reggie that Doug is actually a horrible master and not just concocting progressively difficult scavenger hunts for his beloved pet. Reggie, furious, decides to seek revenge a la The World According to Garp and bite off Doug's prized sex organ.
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The remainder of the movie is a road trip comedy with the foursome of pooches skittering across the countryside in search of Doug's genitals. Along the way they are terrorized by fireworks at a county fair, organize a jailbreak from the pound involving large amounts of fecal matter, and eat each other's vomit. There's a scene where they get high and Sofia Vergara voices a talking couch, one where Dennis Quaid watches Bug get snatched by falcon, and one where they determine that "doggy style" is just "regular style" for dogs. While some bits, like the dogs trying to crack the conspiracy theory as to why humans are so desperate to bag up their poop, are clever, others, like their hatred of mail carriers, are yawn-inducing.
Even though the grating trailers for Strays revealed many of the movie's gags, and might have hurt more than they helped its box office chances, the comedy actually boasts a strong roster of behind-the-camera talent. The film was directed by Josh Greenbaum, who also helmed the delightfully unhinged Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar back in 2021, and was written by Dan Perrault, who wrote the canceled-too-soon Netflix mockumentary American Vandal. At its best, Strays certainly is tapping into the turd burglar/"Who drew the dicks?" gross out humor that made American Vandal such a hit. One sequence involving rabbit mutilation and another (oddly touching) scene that features the dogs peeing on one another are fine-tuned zany delirium straight from Perrault. Some of Greenbaum's choices, including an instantly iconic needle drop using Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball," are hard to hate.
Universal Pictures
Unfortunately, the film can't string together quite enough of these pearls to make a necklace (dog collar?). We've all heard 10,000 jokes about dogs and even more about penises, so freshness is key here. By the time Strays gets to the tenth humping joke and a sequence about dogs walking in a circle before going to sleep, it feels like the movie's already run out of material despite its quick 90-minute runtime. An unforgivable use of "London Bridge" should also have Fergie's legal council suing for emotional damages.
Moreover, Strays falls into the common R-rated comedy pitfall of taking a hard left into sentimentality at the 11th hour. After spending much of its runtime focused on penis size, sniffing butts and a squirrel menage a trois, the film pivots to messages of belonging, friendship and self-worth at the end. And while sure, the final confrontation between Doug and the dogs is The Package levels of grizzly fun, the deceleration of rat-a-tat jokes makes the last half hour drag.
Strays won't be winning any prizes this year and as a whole is probably worth saving until you can watch it Doug-style on a laptop propped in front of your toilet. But, there are some golden (buttery) scraps strewn around like discarded pizza crusts. You'll just have to paw through some garbage to find them.
Grade: C-
Watch Strays in theaters starting Aug. 18.
