Strays (2023)

"Doug" (Will Forte) has had enough of a dog ("Reggie") that he only kept to spite his ex-girfriend on whom he was cheating. Each day he takes it on a ball-hunt only to drive away and leave him. Usually he manages to find his way home so an even longer journey is needed, and that's when "Reggie" - lost and faced with some nasty hoodlum-hounds - encounters the feisty "Bug" and the two become firm friends before having a series of adventures meeting new friends and foes as they try to get him home to his owner - only this time with a much less obedient ouch-agenda. Dog lovers may love this, and the script is at times quite wittily put together using the skills of Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx to keep the pacy drama moving along quite well for ninety minutes. It's a feel-good film with just an hint of canine attitude but after a while the joke wears a bit thin and the story finds itself in a repetitive rut. It's telly fodder, and quite amusing at that, but if you're not a pet fan (I'm not) then it's appeal is limited and the ending is straight out of a slapstick movie (and not a good one).

Bloody awful movie, that final scene with Doug is focking funny though!

<em>'Strays'</em> is still a terrible film, though. Reminiscent it is of <em>'Sausage Party'</em>, in that it uses lazy sexually rude shock value to try and entertain. At least that 2016 flick is animated and is about food, so works more than it should (if still not good). This, given what it's about (dogs) and how it's portrayed (live-action), is just disturbing. Even beyond that, it's all just so stupid and uninteresting.

Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx try to salvage this with their voice work, though the rest of the cast are all quite lousy unfortunately. I dunno how they got Brett Gelman to agree to his scene, by the way!£! Off-screen, surprising to see the names of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller attached as producers... expect much more from them, heck even from Louis Leterrier too!

I really disliked this, I can't lie. That earlier mentioned scene, one or two (literally) other 'OK' bits as well as how, in fairness, good the effects are for the dogs is what stops me rating this lower - I'm probably being too generous, mind. These sorta wacky movies for adults can work, but you gotta get more creative than this; sex and poop jokes only get you so far.