'Strays' Vulgarity Fails To Boost Its Premise
Dogs form heartwarming tales. Lady and the Tramp made us believe dogs could fall in love. In the sitcom, Fraiser had Eddie, was adored by audiences and made folks want to buy their own real-life jack russel terrier. Our hearts break at the end of Marly & Me. Strays is not one of those tales. It's a raunchy comedy involving talking dogs in live-action. What would usually be a movie made for kids is produced for adults. However, the jokes would appeal more to teenagers than people in their twenties to thirties.
Strays begins on an interesting note. Reggie (Will Ferrell) is a happy, free-spirited dog who's unaware that his owner Doug (Will Forte), neglects him. No matter how often Doug drops Reggie off in a remote area, Reggie finds his way back. One day, Doug manages to successfully dispose of Reggie. From here, Reggie meets Bug (Jamie Foxx.) Bug is a stray dog who's content with being a stray. It's not until later that we find out that Bug is a stray for a reason. Strays is an adult version of Toy Story. Underneath the film's lame penis jokes is an existential tale of purpose. Is a dog meant to have an owner, or is it perfectly content with being alone? Reggie has his fellow dog friends, who he eventually can consider to be family. However, is it the same as having an owner who loves you?
The casting of Strays is far better than I would have expected. I confess I am not a Will Ferrell fan. I find his constant screaming of nonsense to be ear-shatteringly annoying. I came into this film expecting to hear Will Ferrell and Jamie Fox try to outshout each other. Thankfully, this was not that kind of casting decision. Ferrell inserts a gentleness to his voice that sounds innocent, which is what Reggie is; a polite, optimistic dog who hasn't let cynicism get the best of him. Bug, on the other hand, has let life affect him. Foxx inserts a rough persona into Bug, giving it a certain edge that's appropriately fitting for his character. It's too bad the jokes aren't as creative as the casting.
Where Strays stumbles are in its humor, the jokes are mostly lame toilet gags and dog puns. I get Strays is supposed to root much of its comedy in its dog premise, but it gets old fast when the movie doesn't provide anything more clever. Strays can be funny at times but not too often. The plot itself is a wise revenge tale where Reggie's mission is to find the owner who once tossed him away and bite his member off. More impressive than the film's twisted narrative is the movie's CGI.
Is the CG completely entirely impressive? No. But I can't tell when I'm looking at a real or fake dog. I can point out the artificiality in the frame when the dogs speak. Their mouths don't seem to match their face. I can see the tongue moving when it should annunciate certain words, but it's not entirely convincing since dogs don't speak in real life. The effects are similar to the live-action Lion King. Or, as the film puts it, photorealistic.
Everything looks impressive until we see the animals speak. It's certainly leaps and bounds above Look Who's Talking Now, but that's not saying much, as the visual effects at the time didn't allow mouths to move when characters spoke on screen. Are the dogs real or digital? I'd put my money on digital as it would seem impossible for them to match the camera's movement accurately, hitting their marks within the frame perfectly.
As impressive as the CGI is (mostly), the same can't be said for most of Dan Perrault's script, as it seems to be crass for the sake of being crass. It's to tell the audience that it's an R-rated film. The movie proudly flaunts its rating with more dong jokes you wave a corndog at. Doesn't the movie have anything more clever than dogs being gross to try and earn a laugh? I get dogs do nasty things but does every joke have to be about vile dogs? You can still earn an R rating without being cheap on the humor.
Some good bits in the film gave me a few chuckles. Mostly all of them are in the trailer. There's a portion where the dogs eat some mushrooms, causing them to have a major drug trip. The high ends in a moment of terror for the dogs but laughs for the audience. The other bit involves the dogs referring to a poster of a mailman as the devil.
Aside from those short bits of chuckles, Strays is predictable. It can be quick-witted but mostly aims for the lowest common denominator in its laughs. That's unfortunate, as Strays has something going. It's a tale about a dog choosing to be independent or dependent on an owner. It resembles Woody's challenge of defining a lost toy in Toy Story 4.
Furthermore, the plot between The DC League of Super-Pets and Strays is almost identical. Both deal with a protagonist who's been abandoned by their owner. And both tag along with a group of other rejected animals. Unlike Toy Story or Super-Pets, Strays avoids being sentimental. We love dogs as much as they love us. Strays is about that love told through the perspective of dogs speaking as if they're adults. Adults commonly swear, so it makes sense for the dogs to use the same vocabulary the everyday person uses. The only thing is, the novelty wears off fast. Once we get over the fact that the dogs drop the F-bomb constantly, there's not much for Strays to go on. This one almost makes it out of the adoption kennel but not quite.
