The script, written by Dan Perrault, decides the best approach to humor is to just spit out whatever comes to mind instead of finding the right joke for the right time.
Imagine that you’re in the film industry. A writer, perhaps. Your five year old child tells you a story about a dog looking to find its way home. The dog, maybe named Reggie, encounters and befriends several other dogs along his perilous journey. The dogs bond with each other through a series of misadventures that demonstrate the meaning of teamwork and true friendship. Thinking this story has the potential for a family film, you write it down. You embellish it a little bit, sure, but it remains your child’s story at heart.
You take it to a producer, who reads it, and says, “This is great! I see Will Ferrell voicing Reggie.” And then that same producer decides it’s missing 72 minutes worth of unfunny poop and penis jokes and sends it for a rewrite. I’m not certain that’s how Strays came to be but it would make more sense than someone thinking the film’s final incarnation would be a good idea.
Strays does indeed tell the story of a Border Terrier named Reggie, voiced by Will Farrell, who is owned by a dirt-bag named Doug (Will Forte.) Doug blames Reggie for everything that’s wrong with his life. (And there is a lot.) He drives Reggie to a faraway city and leaves him there. Reggie, being hopelessly naive, thinks that Doug is playing a game and would never intentionally abandon him.
Reggie then meets Bug, voiced by Jamie Foxx, a Boston Terrier, who informs Reggie that he has definitely been abandoned. Bug tries to introduce Reggie to all of the freedom of being a stray. Anything you pee on is yours. You can hump anything. Leashes are for suckers.
Along with two other dogs, Maggie (Isla Fisher) and Hunter (Randall Park), Reggie and Bug eventually hatch a plan that will lead Reggie back home to Doug to bite his penis off. Yep, you read that correctly. That’s the plan. And, lest you think that’s a spoiler, that tidbit was included in the red band trailer for the movie. And, while the trailer hints that the movie will be full of profanity, it doesn’t prepare you for the overload of jokes that do not land.
No, I didn’t find Strays nearly unwatchable because it’s full of raunchy humor. When dirty jokes are funny, I’m all for them. There’s always room in my heart for a crude comedy. The script, written by Dan Perrault, decides the best approach to humor is to just spit out whatever comes to mind instead of finding the right joke for the right time. As a result, for every twenty jokes, maybe one will elicit a smile. I laughed out loud twice during the movie. The eight other people at my screening laughed audibly once. Sadly, all of the potentially laugh-out-loud moments were given away in the trailers.
If you’re a dog lover, you’ll recognize some genuinely funny observations about canine behavior littered throughout the movie. But there’s nothing that will make it worth sitting through the slog of fecal, phallic, and fornication jokes that comprise the rest of the movie. Strays needs to be put to sleep.
1.0 out of 5.0 stars
