Category:

Review

Duration: 11:09

33 views

2

"Strays" (2023) directed by Josh Greenbaum is a little over the top crude but was still quite funny and enjoyable. The dog CGI is probably the best in any live action animal film we've seen to date.

Reggie is a dog who is unloved and abused by his owner Doug (Will Forte). Eventually Doug drives 3 hours away and gets rid of Reggie for good, leaving Reggie to become a stray on the street. Reggie meets another stray, Bug, and two other dogs and becomes friends with them. Reggie finally realizes that he's been mistreated by his owner and he sets off on a revenge plan to bite Doug's dick off.

Strays is a weird one because it's simultaneously for children and yet also not at all. The idea of the film is inherently childish but it's humor and the way it's written is dialed to eleven on the risqué scale; resulting in a somewhat awkward film that is both for everyone and nobody. In general the film is definitely funny, but it actually misses quite a bit as well. I felt it's humor was far more crude and gross than necessary, I didn't laugh at any of the dick, sex, or poop jokes whatsoever, and there's obviously quite a lot of them.

The cast do elevate the film and CGI dog mouths moving have never looked better on the live action screen. There is some level of emotion to the movie, especially towards the beginning which was borderline impossible to watch similar to "Scott's Tots" from The Office. How the dogs knew so little and yet so much about the world didn't make sense to me, and an additional layer of stupidity is introduced when you realize that birds are also intelligent enough to cuss off in English when they're mad, yet these ones had to be subtitled, and also that while humans and dogs can't understand each other, they both verbally speak English out loud to each other instead of just barking and noise like most animal movies. Obviously I'm taking it too seriously but that's part of the fun when criticizing these cheap and bad comedies.

Strays is way too crude for me to recommend to most people. I do own a dog myself, but she is female and so I found this film's obsession with dog penises to be unfamiliar and gross.

#rainynights #movies #strays