Reggie (the voice of Will Ferrell) is a happy little dog who loves his owner Doug (Will Forte). He especially likes the game Doug plays where he takes Reggie out to remote locations in the middle of nowhere and throws his ball into the distance. Sadly, Reggie doesn’t realise that Doug hates him and is trying to abandon him. Yet the oblivious Reggie always manages to find his way back home, much to Doug’s annoyance.
One day, Doug drives him for hours out of town in a final bid to lose Reggie forever. Hours pass and Reggie is alone in the city, lost and with no way home. Soon he meets up with a friendly pack of strays – Bug (the voice of Jamie Foxx), Maggie (the voice of Isla Fisher), and Hunter (the voice of Randall Park). They manage to get through to the naïve pup and tell Reggie straight that Doug has abandoned him. So now with revenge in his mind and a new set of friends in tow, Reggie is determined to make his way back home one more time – to exact revenge on Doug once and for all.
If you’ve seen the trailers, then you’ve seen most of the best gags that ‘Strays’ has to offer – something of a curse that most R-rated comedies suffer from. But even though the plot is predictable, and the gags are sometimes obvious, the cast elevates the material and gives ‘Strays’ a lot of heart. Its best attribute is a surprisingly fresh and relevant take on abusive relationships – it even has some genuinely good insight and outlooks on these subjects. I was surprised that amongst the anarchy and chaos, ‘Strays’ still manages to make its emotional story the centrepiece of the film.
The cast are all excellent with Will Ferrell channelling his beloved wide-eyed wonder to good effect here. Think ‘Elf’ and ‘Spirited’ and you’ll get what Reggie is like as a character. Jamie Foxx is superb as Bug and has most of the film’s best lines. Isla Fisher and Randall Park are sweet as a couple of good-natured dogs who are attracted to one another. Will Forte can play a douche like no other, and there’s nice live-action cameos from Brett Gelman and (bizarrely) Dennis Quaid. Voice cameos come in the form of Rob Riggle, Josh Gad, SofÃa Vergara and Harvey Guillén.
For a 93min film, I did clock-watch a few times, and that’s a shame because I think the set-up and the premise was decent enough to last the duration. The middle act drags on at times, with an over-reliance on gross laughs to do all of the heavy lifting. I’m not saying I didn’t laugh, but the lingering shots of a dog pound cell full of canines going to the toilet was perhaps a camera angle that the Academy didn’t require for their consideration.
‘Strays’ is a bawdy comedy that’s instantly forgettable, but it does have some good gags in it and some solid vocal performances that elevates the material at times. It’s pretty much what you expect it to be, but with much more toilet humour than you’d think, or indeed want. One scene towards the end of the movie has a fantastic use of the Miley Cyrus track ‘Wrecking Ball’ that needs to be seen to be believed though. It does just about enough to guarantee a fun night out at the movies, but you’ll struggle to revisit this in years to come – not like superior, classic R-rated comedies such as ‘Ted’, ‘Sex Drive’ or ‘Step Brothers’ which are just endlessly rewatchable. So the wait for the next truly great R-rated comedy continues.
Cast: Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher, Randall Park, Will Forte, Brett Gelman, Dennis Quaid, Rob Riggle, Josh Gad, SofÃa Vergara, Harvey Guillén Director: Josh Greenbaum Writer: Dan Perrault Certificate: 15 Duration: 93 mins Released by: Universal Release date: 18th August 2023
