Strays – Off the Beaten Path

If you have to pee on something to own it, the only things I own are my toilet and the floor around my toilet.

Strays is the story of Reggie (Will Ferrell), a down on his luck dog who has been purposely abandoned by his owner Doug (Will Forte). After befriending three other strays, Bug (Jamie Foxx), Maggie (Isla Fisher), and Hunter (Randall Park), Reggie ventures to return home to seek revenge against Doug.

The humor in this film is very crude. Many adult jokes are made, some of which are even more raunchy because they are delivered by a dog. While I did laugh quite a bit, overall the humor didn’t really work for me. I’m not the biggest fan of this style of dirty humor.

For what it’s worth, the voice actors giving the performances of the dogs did a good job of conveying plenty of emotion and making me care about their relationships. Will Ferrell made me believe he was a happy go lucky puppy who could see no evil in the world.

At times, the humor can be quite gross. If you like poop jokes, you’ll probably love this.

As Reggie and his friends make their way back to Doug’s house, the bonds between these dogs grows in unexpected ways. Randall develops a crush on Maggie. Reggie and Bug become best friends. It’s very sweet at times, and quite weird at others. You know what I’m referring to if you’ve seen the film.

It is unfortunate that this film made an underwhelming debut at the box office. One of the scripts I’m working on is a dark comedy about a talking dog. So I was rooting for this one, which might be like a cousin to my script.

Overall, I’d give this a final score of 4/10 puppies. The characters and voice performances are fun, but the humor was a pretty big miss for me.

Apologies for the shorter review this week, this movie was not conducive to a longer write up.

Join me next Monday for my review of another new movie!