On one hand, I can count the number of times a movie’s audience burst into applause at the climax:
• In 1981, when E.T. levitates the kids and their bicycles o’er the heads of authorities.
• Six years later, in Fatal Attraction, when Anne Archer shoots Glenn Close dead.
• And now, when four dogs — spoiler — rip Will Forte’s dick off.
Strays, ladies and gentlemen. Whereas singer Sarah MacLachlan famously tugged at your heartstrings in ASCAP commercials to get you to spend $18 a month to rescue dogs, Universal Pictures spent $30 million on a live-action comedy in which dogs’ mouths are animated to say “fuck” a lot. We’re talking Scorsese and Scarface level of “fuck”s. Add all the humping and the pooping — oh, do they ever hump and poop — and Strays is nothing if not filthy.
To be clear, that’s a plus, but only because the doers are adorable dogs instead of asshole adults. Will Ferrell voices Reggie, the canine so clueless he has no idea his ever-stoned, trailer-trash owner, Doug (Forte, MacGruber), has ditched him. Jamie Foxx’s Bug, a Boston Terrier, immediately befriends Reggie to share his street smarts. That includes an intro to his park-hanging pals, a pretty Shepherd (Isla Fisher, 2018’s Tag) and a cone-necked Great Dane (Randall Park, Office Christmas Party) who go all-in for a sausage string of episodic encounters — involving hungry eagles and hallucinogenic mushrooms — accompanying Reggie on his way back home to de-dick Doug.
Is there a normal child in America who wouldn’t laugh their ass off scene to scene? But Strays is hard-rated R on purpose, and that subversiveness often compensates for its narrow range of jokes, much like how Bug talks big to make up for his small size. And I don’t mean his penis, although the movie sure does. Several times.
Like Reggie, the film from director Josh Greenbaum (Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar) and screenwriter Dan Perrault (TV’s American Vandal) is cute, scruffy and just dumb enough you can’t resist giving it a little affection. Even if the CGI to animate the mutts’ mouths is often dodgy, like a paid version of your iPhone’s My Talking Pet app. —Rod Lott