Strays Review

From the humans that brought us 21 Jump Street and Cocaine Bear comes an adult spin on the animal picture.

Reggie (Will Ferrell) is a sweet, naïve Border Terrier who lives with an abusive owner, Doug (Will Forte). Doug tries to get rid of Reggie by playing ‘fetch and fuck’ where Doug would abandon Reggie and Reggie manages to find his way home. Doug attempts to leave Reggie in the big city but when Reggie realises Doug has been mistreating him, the little K9 resolves to destroy Doug’s favourite toy, his penis.

Comedy is subjective: everyone’s taste is different. Some people’s tolerance for rude and crude will vary and Strays was incredibly crude. This was a film that featured piss, shit, cum, and vomit: all the major food groups. There was also a lot of penile action with Hunter the Great Dane (Randall Park) who has an impressive member. I am a fan of series like Bottom and The Inbetweeners and I ended up having a blast watching Strays.

There were so many sequences that led to me laughing like a twat. I laughed so much that my throat and jaw were hurting. Strays was rapid fire with joke delivery as shown in the film’s opening as Reggie describes his life with Doug and Reggie interrupting Doug’s ‘playtime.’ Because of this machine gun approach any jokes that didn’t land had no chance to linger.

Strays was filled with crude humour; it was tempered by Reggie’s innocence. Ferrell played the character like Buddy from Elf, someone with a sunny disposition who happened to be thrust into the harsh reality of the real world. Strays reminded me of Good Boys, a raunchy comedy that focused on three young boys who had innocent goals like kissing a girl and sipping a beer. Buddy’s naivety enhanced some of the comedy like when Reggie was humping a garden gnome. Not all the jokes aimed to be crude and shocking since there was also some cute pet humour like Reggie and Bug (Jamie Foxx) seeing their reflections and thinking they were seeing other dogs, and the pre-sleep rituals the dogs go through.

Strays’ story was an adult retelling of The Incredible Journey, a family film where a group of pets travel through the wilderness to get home. Strays’ had a basic story of the characters going from A to B and occasionally going on a detour like going to a county fair and eating some magic mushrooms. Bug’s backstory was pretty much the same as Ace’s from DC League of Superpets. However, Strays was not meant to be a film with original or nuanced storytelling, it was a joke vessel and it did that brilliantly.

Strays was a great example of crude and disgusting humour done right. Some people will hate it because of its style of comedy, whilst others will laugh their heads off.