MOVIE OF THE WEEK (8/18/23): STRAYS

"The audience might be as high as we are if they find this entertaining!" (From left): Bug (Jamie Foxx) Reggie (Will Ferrell), Maggie (Isla Fisher) and Hunter (Randall Park) prepare to have a snack – with unexpected consequences – in a scene from STRAYS. Credit: Chuck Zlotnick/Universal Pictures © 2023 Universal Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE:

DIRECTOR: Josh Greenbaum

KEY CAST MEMBERS: Will Forte, Brett Gelman, and the voices of Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher, Randall Park, Josh Gad, Harvey Guillén, Rob Riggle, Jamie Demetriou and Sofia Vergara 

WEB SITE: https://www.strays.movie/

THE STORY: Brought to you (in)famously by the team behind Cocaine Bear and 21 Jump Street, STRAYS centers on Reggie (voiced by Will Ferrell), a naive, optimistic Border Terrier who doesn't realize his owner Doug (Will Forte), hates him. Like, really hates him. That's why when Doug finally is able to ditch him on the streets of the Pacific Northwest, he has no idea what's going on.

Bug, a Boston Terrier (voiced by Jamie Foxx) with a literal love of couches, however, does. That's why he decides its best to hip Reggie to what's happening alongside his crew of Maggie (voiced by Isla Fisher), an Australian Shepherd and Hunter, a stressed out Great Dane (voiced by Russell Park) who doesn't want to stop wearing his protective cone. Once Reggie realizes what's happened, he decides his time to take revenge against Doug by biting off his favorite toy (and TRUST ME, it AIN'T a toy!).

But will Reggie get his revenge? There's only way to find out ...

THE REVIEW: Let me be brief: I liked Cocaine Bear. I own 21 Jump Street on Blu-Ray.  STRAYS, however, shouldn't be adopted by movie audiences.

In fact, for neutering comedy the ways it does, it should be put down with extreme prejudice.

There are essentially three joke subjects in strays: Feces, sex/bodily fluids and anatomy. That's about it. And they are worn out to death in the dumbest, grossest fashion possibly for 90+ minutes. As a stand-up comedian, I know that when used well, profanity can be of the highest verbal linguistics (see Pryor, Richard and Carlin, George for proof). STRAYS, however, uses profanity (along with the aforementioned three other subjects) so gratuitously that it becomes as ineffective as it is offensive. And it's plenty offensive simply for how much it wears out those three tropes. 

I for one am extremely happy Jamie Foxx is doing better after his recent health episode not only for his own well-being, but for the fact this hopefully won't be his last theatrical release. The film tries to break free from its 14 year-old boy juvenile nature in its last act ... Only to have that derailed by more silliness before the eventual "I guess I'm still watching this" ending. Forte is a shoo-in for a Golden Raspberry nomination, which might be the only endorsement PETA or the SPCA might give this gross-out trainwreck of a comedy. I mean, the long-forgotten The Happytime Murders was FAR more entertaining than this even though you knew it was wrong (and Jim Henson Studios HATED what it did to puppets), but STRAYS .... Not so much. When you find yourself asking "How did this get made?!" and "How much money was wasted on this?!" you probably won't be thinking "sequel!"

They say all dogs go to heaven – but as STRAYS proves, there really are some bad dogs in this world and this movie is full of them.

OVERALL RATING (OUT OF FOUR POSSIBLE BUCKETS OF POPCORN):