STRAYS

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Special Effects: B-

Strays falls prey to its marketing campaign in a very conventional, almost traditional way: it burns through a lot of its funniest bits in the trailer. I have to wonder how much more fun I might have found this movie if I didn’t already know what was coming several times—gags I did laugh pretty hard at, the first of the half dozen times or so I already saw them.

But, what are you going to do? You have to share some of it in order to market a movie as something with the tone it has—which is to say, an “animal adventure” film crossed with a raunchy comedy. These are talking dogs, which also say “fuck” and “shit” a lot.

This supposed tonal dissonance is hardly new in itself, considering movies like Paul (2011) and Ted (2012), respectively about a stoner alien and a foul-mouthed Teddy bear, came out more than ten years ago. The biggest surprise with Strays is that it didn’t get made sooner.

But, here’s the thing. How much you enjoy Strays is absolutely going to depend on how much of an animal lover you are. If you have any appreciation whatsoever and also love dogs, you are going to have a blast watching this movie, which is about a small dog (voiced by Will Ferrell) making his way back from the city to a suburban human (Will Forte) he doesn’t realize doesn’t actually care about him. He befriends three other strays along the way, voiced by Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher and Randall Park, who form a sort of “chosen family” pack with him and assist on his quest.

Much hijinks ensues, as you can easily predict. A lot of it is very entertaining, a good portion of it very funny. A movie like this really needs more “laughs per minute” than it actually has, which essentially means it would be far more effective as a film short. But, who the hell watches film shorts, outside of film festivals? It’s a bit of a catch-22, having to spread an otherwise great premise thin just so it can have some hope of an actual audience.

Still, I’m trying not to spoil too much here, so that if you should decide to check this movie out, you’ll have a better experience with it. The less you know going in, the better. All you really need to know is that it takes what is traditionally a kids’ genre and runs it through the prism of R-rated comedies. You can just imagine all the foul language they use and all the inanimate and/or inappropriate things they hump.

The voice work is decent. The CGI moving mouths, barely rendered better than they were in the Babe movies from the nineties, indicate adequate visual effects work. I’m probably the only person in the audience thinking about this, but a small dog’s body visibly rising and lowering from the effects of panting doesn’t quite fit with calm delivery of dialogue, no indication of it being out of breath. I realize it’s a little extra to be nitpicking the “realism” of a movie about talking dogs. It would have been a note I would have given during production nonetheless.

Strays does have an undercurrent of genuine sweetness to it, and Will Ferrell’s Reggie, the main protagonist, has a charming naiveté about him. Bug is the streetwise stray who befriends him, another small but high strung dog, and Jamie Foxx clearly had a good time voicing him. And I’ll give it this much credit: Strays goes for broke in its climactic sequence in a way that is never even hinted at in the trailer, and borders on shocking. These are dogs that would be flipping their middle finger to the establishment, if they had any fingers. Let’s say they’re shitting on the face of the establishment—with mixed results. I had a good enough time with it, anyway.

It’s all fun and games and then you come across some mushrooms.

Overall: B