I Just Saw

I just saw Strays, a live-action CGI comedy directed by Josh Greenbaum and written by Dan Perrault, where effects are used to animate the mouths of real dogs. Will Ferrell voices Reggie, a border terrier whose owner Doug (Will Forte) is a disgusting wad of human garbage who only has him because his ex wanted to take him with her. Amusingly for a stoner comedy, “Doug” is the only true stoner in the film (as in, the only human who smokes marijuana), yet isn’t just its antagonist but an irredeemable Berkshire Hunt who’s implied to be a sex offender and at one point gears up to beat a little dog to death.

Like many a victim of parental abuse, Reggie loves his owner and misinterprets the abuse as affection. When Doug finally abandons him in a filthy alleyway, however, he’s forced to face the truth. Thankfully he meets Bug (Jamie Foxx), a Boston terrier with a big heart and a lotta moxie who introduces him to a friend group that includes Australian shepherd Maggie (Isla Fisher) and great Dane Hunter (Randall Park). Together they go on a quest to avenge Reggie, by returning to Doug and… let’s say “neutralising” the threat that he poses as a sex offender.

Strays follows a formulated structure into which it slots its adult-rated jokes, an approach familiar from the Ted films. Scenes comparable to Seth MacFarlane’s brand of humour and storytelling are its weakest. A lot of the jokes involving humans away from the dogs fall into that Family Guy, “adult animation” style of anti-humour. These include a frankly bizarre Dennis Quaid cameo of which the punchline is “and I’m Dennis Quaid” (he literally says that). It’s what South Park, when parodying Family Guy, called “manatee humour”: jokes that feel like they were constructed by having manatees pick out random balls with concepts written on them. (In the cameo’s case “Dennis Quaid”, “birdwatching”… erm, that’s it.) Later we get an officer at the dog pound painting a naked portrait of himself to give to his father because… look, I just work here, okay? To be fair, there is at the end a joke about bestiality that did get a big laugh out of me.

The jokes involving the dogs and those they meet can be very funny. My favourite joke in the film is probably the darkest and most sinister, about serial killing, which I guess says a lot about my sense of humour. Toilet humour doesn’t really do it for me and I was dreading that aspect of Strays, but besides a few shots that made the bile rise in my gullet, it was thankfully restrained. 

The main cast does a good job of their roles, Foxx being the standout as Bug, a loveable little rascal. I’m a really soft touch when it comes to dogs, so I knew that I’d probably like this movie on some level just for its canine casting. Don’t judge me, but I was even genuinely moved by the tale of little Reggie, a sweet little scrap of a mutt in his red bandana who’s so innocent, and so undeserving of Doug’s neglect. Foxx is the standout, but Ferrell is the emotional core. Ferrell’s made some bad movies, but he does wide-eyed guilelessness really well (see also: 2003’s Elf).

I’m not ashamed: seeing Reggie dart across the screen in pursuit of a tennis ball, or looking sad on a piece of wet cardboard, made me have to restrain myself from shouting “LOOK AT HIS WIDDLE WEGS. I JUST WANNA CUDDLE THE GOOD BOY.” Which cinema audiences tend to frown at you for doing. His sweetness and light in the context of his maltreatment reminds me of the saddest moment in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954); when “Miss Lonelyhearts” finds that her dog has been killed and hauls it up to her window in a basket, screaming in frustration and despair at her neighbours. (“Did you kill him because he liked ya? Just because he liked ya?”) A moment that still gets me choked up just thinking about it. Like I told ya: soft touch.

The film climaxes with the funniest use of a pop song, Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball”, that I’ve seen in a while. The climax alone bumps Strays up a notch for me. While it has a fair amount of dead air in terms of laughs and interest, that denouement is a chef’s kiss. “This is cinema”, my friend whispered joyfully to me.

Sidenote: One of the major comedic setpieces in Strays is a surprisingly subtle reference to Donna Tartt’s famous Gothic novel and debut, The Secret History (1996), about a group of college kids who kill a farmer during a bacchanal. It’s so subtle it’s almost like an in-joke from someone on the creative team. See if you can spot it. I’ll give you a clue: in The Secret History, one of the characters is nicknamed “Bunny”.

Rating: 3/4