Canine comedy 'Strays' both puerile and tasteless
“Strays” - ★ ½
Hey, I'm up for a hilarious assault against good taste any time.
Give me the films of John Waters, the Farrelly brothers, even Peter Jackson (who directed the aptly titled “Bad Taste” and “Braindead”).
But please, not Josh Greenbaum's “Strays.”
If watching talking canines constantly committing gnomosexual acts with inanimate yard statuary floats your boat, this might be your dream cruise. Otherwise, it could just give you a sinking sensation.
“Strays,” written by Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Dan Perrault, begins as a promising, subversively anthropomorphic comedy that cheerfully destroys the conventions common to cherished family-oriented dog movies.
Then it quickly devolves into an annoying slog through a series of repetitive gross-outs in what I can charitably describe as the laziest movie I have witnessed so far this century.
This puerile revenge tail/tale centers around a lovable and idealistic Border Terrier named Reggie (voiced by Will Ferrell), so blinded by his naive optimism that he can't see his owner, Doug (Will Forte), for the hateful and sadistic jerk he truly is.
Even after Doug drives miles away and abandons the poor canine in the wild, the delusional Reggie continues to believe Doug adores him.
Until Reggie meets a trash-talking, foul-mouthed Boston Terrier named Bug (Jamie Foxx) who sets him straight on the ways of the inhumane human world.
With his doggie eyes opened, Reggie vows to commit the ultimate revenge: He will find Doug and bite off his most prized possession, his naughty bits.
Bug vows to help Reggie in his quest, and along with him come his pals, a super-sniffing Australian Shepherd named Maggie (Isla Fisher) and Hunter (Randall Park), a Great Dane recovering from his stressful career as an emotional support dog.
Together, they parody the quest plots of “Lassie Come Home,” “Homeward Bound,” “A Dog's Way Home” and other titles, only this trip contains plenty of canine excrement, animal sexual shenanigans and raw humor that once upon a time would have earned this movie an adults-only MPAA rating.
That noted, “Strays” may certainly appeal to younger audiences starving for something different and extremely divorced from Hollywood's flood of safe, formulaic fodder.
Although “Strays” clocks in at a mere 93 minutes, its parade of episodic vignettes makes it feel much longer and protracted, perhaps because the filmmakers assumed that if something is shockingly funny once, it will be shockingly funny three or four times more. This feature would play better as a taut, streamlined film short.
Longtime readers of this column might remember frequent rants about Hollywood's uncreative overuse of the same old moldy, interchangeable cliches in visuals and dialogue.
I postulated that it's almost impossible to make a movie without utilizing these visual crutches: Amusement parks or carnivals, fireworks, big fans (on walls or ceilings), balloons and thumbs-up gestures. Or these verbal crutches: “Trust me,” “Awesome,” “It's complicated” and any variation of “I can't do this!”
“Strays” gleefully recycles them all (with six utterances of “awesome”).
And how desperate can a comedy get when it traffics in that shopworn cliché of characters doing weird stuff after ingesting hallucinogenic substances? (Note to filmmakers: “80 for Brady” beat you to this in February.)
As shocking and bold as “Strays” imagines itself to be, it weenies out on the movie's cinematic pièce-de-résistance, when Reggie fulfills his pledge to avenge his abuse by nasty Doug.
Ben Stiller's zipper incident in “There's Something About Mary” exuded far more wincing, visceral impact.
But that would be one of those assaults against good taste that, unlike “Strays,” was truly hilarious.
Starring: Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Will Forte, Randall Park, Isla Fisher
Directed by: Josh Greenbaum
Other: A Universal Pictures theatrical release. Rated R for drug use, language, crude and sexual content. 93 minutes