Strays (2023) Review!!

Synopsis – An abandoned dog teams up with other strays to get revenge on his former owner.

My Take – While we all have seen every form of medium being jammed up with warm and fuzzy films about talking dogs, the genre, usually reserved for more family friendly offerings, has finally received a R-rated makeover with names like Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Louis Leterrier (Fast X, Now You See Me) attached as producers.

Similar in vein to films like Sausage Party (2016) and Ted (2012), this latest from writer Dan Perrault (American Vandal) and director Josh Greenbaum (Barb And Star Go To Vista Del Mar) sees a story from a dog’s point of view, made raunchy as possible by loading it up with sex jokes, drugs and constant swearing, as they trek across America, with their own issues around abuse, abandonment and emotional PTSD in mind, as well as who to hump and when.

Absolutely delivering on the promise of its premise, the result is a canine caper that’s sick, sweet, and hilarious. Loaded with a handful of genuine laugh-out-loud and cheerfully offensive scenes.

Sure, this could have been a film that tries far too hard at being funny through cheap gags and the typical doggy misunderstandings, however, it ends up working quite well. This is a film that fiercely disrespects Marley and Me (2008) and plays like a four-legged Seth Rogen film, crude and crass and not for the prude-hearted.

The story follows Reggie (voiced by Will Ferrell), a sweet and optimistic little border terrier who doesn’t understand that he is being abused by his owner, Doug (Will Forte), a shiftless pothead who has grown to hate Reggie interrupting him in everything, particularly when he is trying to masturbate.

Reggie is so heartbreakingly enamored with Doug that he doesn’t realize that his game of “Fetch – Fuck!” has actually been his owner’s attempts to get rid of him by throwing a ball and driving home contentedly, only for the dog to show up hours or days later with the ball.

However, one day Reggie is effectively abandoned and befriended by a street-smart terrier, Bug (voiced by Jamie Foxx), an Australian shepherd called Maggie (voiced by Isla Fisher) and a lugubrious great Dane, Hunter (voiced by Randall Park), who make him realize how he has absorbed and normalized the cruelty of his human owner, and how being a stray should be a badge of honor. But when the scales fall from Reggie’s eyes, he finds himself galvanized by a revenge mission – to bite Doug’s penis off. Joined by his three friends, Reggie begins the walk back to the place he once called home.

It is essentially a road trip film but with dogs instead of people. As the film goes on, things only get wilder. The gags get more ambitious, and the plot gets more and more outlandish, but the combination of “Oh look, cute dogs!” with moments where you sit there and uttering “WTF” hits that sweet spot.

Sex features in most scenes, thought it usually involves inanimate objects, like a couch voiced by Sofia Vergara. The size of Hunter’s knob is also the butt of multiple jokes, while at the same time briefly powering the plot. And there’s every kind of poop joke you can imagine; some funny, some rancid. Meaning the film should very much be avoided by those who are easily offended.

Josh Greenbaum‘s direction is good, and the film plays as formulaically as the sappy films it’s mocking. Beneath the vulgarity, this is a modern Hollywood comedy all the way. That means plenty of life lessons served between the laughs.

And while the message of the film occasionally becomes confused, writer Perrault even manages to smuggle in some serious points, about trauma caused by fireworks, and about whether dogs are here to make humans happy, or vice-versa. Which in turn gets us closer to the big bite at the end.

It also helps that voice cast is perfect. Will Ferrell is perfectly cast as the protagonist pooch, his sweet naivety a delightful throwback to Elf (2003). Jamie Foxx contrasts as a streetwise, no nonsense, stray pup who uses the F word maybe one too many times and is all about the filthiest stuff in life. Isla Fisher superbly bounces her humor off the bigger personalities here, while Randall Park is excellent as the dorky, uptight Hunter.

Will Forte steals the show with every scene he’s in, though they are pretty much all relegated to the beginning and end. In other roles, Brett Gelman, Harvey Guillén, Jamie Demetriou, Josh Gad, Rob Riggle and Sofia Vergara are good. On the whole, ‘Strays’ is a hilarious and raunchy canine caper that provides a very satisfying R-Rated experience.