Strays Parent Guide

Reggie (Will Ferrell) is a sweet if stupid little terrier who thinks he’s been playing a fun game with his owner, Doug (Will Forte). In this game, Doug drives Reggie way out of town, throws his ball, and then leaves him there to find his own way home. Reggie keeps trotting on back, though, and Doug’s decided to up the difficulty a little. He’s abandoned Reggie in a big city three hours away, and Reggie is going to need some help to get home.

Luckily, our canine protagonist meets Bug (Jamie Foxx), a stray Boston terrier; Maggie (Isla Fisher), a recently-abandoned Australian sheepdog; and Hunter (Randall Park), a Great Dane and police dog-turned-therapy animal. With the help of his new friends, Reggie comes to realize that Doug has not been playing a game and is, in fact, a terrible person. And now Reggie wants revenge. His plan is to go back home and take the only thing Doug loves, but he’s still going to need help to get there. With the power of friendship, the dogs set out to find Doug and make him pay.

If you were unsure about this flick’s Restricted rating, let me give you my notes for the first ten minutes alone: 19 f-bombs, a man shaving his genitals, marijuana use, drinking, and masturbation. That’s the first ten. Wanna guess how the next 83 went? Shockingly, more of the same. Actually much worse, since the rest of the movie really zeroes in on dog genital jokes. Technically I just forked over about $15 so that I could see a couple of dog erections. Is this the funny part? Am I supposed to be laughing? Because have a sneaking suspicion that the guys who just got $15 for showing me dog genitals are the ones laughing.

Dangly bits notwithstanding, this movie is a sewage fire for a whole host of other reasons. Jarringly, the technology used to make animals “talk” in this movie doesn’t seem to have evolved at all since, say, Stuart Little, so that’s a fun flashback to the late 90s for you. Of course, those weird little mouths then spend the next 90 minutes swearing at you and making some grossly obscene jokes.

The ultimate problem with Strays is that the underlying story about friendship and love and “aww ain’t dogs the cutest” is crafted for ten-year-olds. Every other part of the film sounds like it was written by a foul-mouthed 14-year-old with all the charm and subtly of a geriatric stripper on a city bus, which is alarming considering writer Dan Perrault has a Peabody Award. I guess this just goes to show that not all careers have an upward trend, and that not all films have a coherent idea of who their audience is. I know who the audience isn’t: Me. I’d rather get a job scooping up poop at a dog park than watch this bit of doggy doo again.