By John Corrado

★★½ (out of 4)

Strays is an R-rated talking dog comedy that stars Will Ferrell as the voice of a little dog named Reggie, who teams up with a streetwise Boston Terrier named Bug (voiced by Jamie Foxx) to get revenge on his mean owner.

More specifically, Reggie plans to get back at his owner Doug (Will Forte) by biting the man’s dick off, because that’s the one thing that he cared more about than him.

This premise gives you a pretty good idea what to expect from director Josh Greenbaum’s film (which was produced by the team of Phil Lord and Chris Miller); it’s not exactly great, but is enjoyable and amusing enough in that dumb comedy sort of way.

Reggie was adopted by Doug’s ex-girlfriend (Jade Marie Fernandez), but when the couple splits, he keeps the dog out of spite. Doug is needlessly cruel to him, which Reggie mistakes for play. This includes Doug’s constant attempts to abandon the dog by driving him far away and throwing a ball, which Reggie mistakes for elaborate games of fetch. When Reggie gets taken far from home, he tries to make his way back to get his revenge. This is when he teams up with the scrappy Bug and his crew, including a shy Great Dane named Hunter (Randall Park) and an abandoned Australian Shepherd named Maggie (Isla Fisher).

The humour has a scatological bent to it that is overly gross at times (they get away with depicting a lot of bodily functions since these are dogs), with your fill of jokes about peeing on and humping things. It’s is all very stupid and very, very crude, but Strays also has a decent amount of heart in its own messed up way. Behind it all is a message about learning to escape an abusive relationship, starting with being able to acknowledge that you were even in one, and there is a weird sort of catharsis to Reggie’s journey.

It’s also just a dumb, gross-out comedy about a dog wanting to bite a man’s dick off. Ferrell offers an erstwhile portrayal of Reggie, who is trusting and innocent to a fault before being corrupted by Bug, allowing the actor to turn the little mutt into one of his usual sweet, guileless characters. The film’s main joke is the juxtaposition of the crudest stuff imaginable coming out of the mouths of these cute dogs, but Strays just barely does enough with this one-joke premise to keep it mildly entertaining. I mostly had fun with this one.

Bonus Features (Blu-ray):

The Blu-ray includes six bonus featurettes. A regular DVD is also included in the package, which ships with a slipcover.

• Talk Like a Dog (7 minutes, 10 seconds): The four main voice actors talk about bringing their canine characters to life, as the filmmakers share how much fun it was to work with them.

• The Ultimate Treat: Making Strays (6 minutes, 34 seconds): A look at working with the canine actors on set, as screenwriter Dan Perrault talks about “subverting” the usual family-friendly talking dog movie.

• Poop, Booms, and Shrooms (6 minutes, 41 seconds): A closer look at filming a few key sequences involving magic mushrooms, fake poop, and fireworks.

• Will Forte: Stray Actor (5 minutes, 57 seconds): Forte talks about playing the mean role of Doug, as cast and crew joke about what he was like on set.

• Training to be Stray (5 minutes, 30 seconds): A look at training the four main dog actors to perform on set.

• A New Best Friend (3 minutes, 36 seconds): A cute little piece focusing on how director Greenbaum adopted one of the rescue dogs used in the film.

• Feature Commentary with Director/Producer Josh Greenbaum and Screenwriter/Producer Dan Perrault

Strays is a Universal Pictures Home Entertainment release. It’s 93 minutes and rated 14A.

Street Date: October 31st, 2023