At least it wasn’t a canine circle jerk. And if you are at all offended by the opening line of this review, stay the Hell away from Strays, a comedy so firmly set in “Beavis and Butt-Head” mode that you will hate yourself for enjoying it. Yet enjoy it you most likely shall. And, no, it wasn’t a circle jerk; it was just four dogs showing solidarity by all peeing on one-another simultaneously. And if you get that far into Strays, you will not be shocked when seeing this happen. I guarantee it.
The dog’s name is “Shithead,” but we’re going to call him “Reggie.” Will Forte plays a pet owner so vile that we the audience want not to be cheated of the objective. I’ll get to that in a bit. Reggie (voice of Will Ferrell) is a cute -yet horribly naïve- Border Terrier and the subject of this hard-hitting documentary. Seriously, Doug (Forte) loathes his dog so much that he often strands him far away from home. Reggie, a relative waif and believer in the goodness of his owner, thinks the old car trick is a game, even when Doug strands him three hours from home in a dark alley of the big city.
It is here that Reggie gets re-named by his new friends Bug (Jamie Foxx), a Boston Terrier, Maggie (Isla Fisher), and Australian Shepherd, and the permanently cone-wearing Hunter (Randall Park), a Great Dane. Reggie has to be eased into the life of Strays, of course. While he doesn’t have the mental block of a MAGA supporter, he contains similar levels of misunderstanding. “Actually, Reggie, Doug is not a great owner. He is, in fact a piece of crap.” Eventually, and thankfully, Reggie reaches this revelation and comes up with a new plan: he’s no longer interested in finding his way home to support Doug; he’s now interested in finding his way home to bite Doug’s dick off.
You read that right.
First, however, Reggie has got to do some R-rated bonding. FWIW, the bonding 
could be X-rated if it were human in nature, like when the quartet decide to gangbang a set of garden fixtures. Oh, we could see this coming after Bug had some tender moments with a very used couch. Hey, you’re either going to find this material really funny … or you’ll be horrified. In the theater where I saw Strays, two women older than myself walked out on the film ten minutes in.
Did I blame them? No.
Did I follow them? Hell no. This shit is hilarious.
Strays doesn’t offer a great deal besides humor … and in fact, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Bug have the exact same backstory as Ace (Kevin Hart) in DC League of Super-Pets? While that part didn’t impress me, I adored the moment where the film completely ripped apart A Dog’s Purpose/A Dog’s Journey. Bonus points for getting Josh Gad to voice-over the critique. There isn’t a whole lot to this film, and I was skeptical because few movie seasons ever have more than one (1) successful raunchy comedy (and we’ve already had ours in Joy Ride), but here we are again. If you can stomach the material, bring a friend who is just as nasty as you are and laugh your asses off all evening; whether or not you choose to pee on each other afterwards is up to you.
There once was a lone Border Terrier
Who stomached his owner and made merrier
Then he made a pact
And learned a new fact
Now he’s one foot, five inches of “scarier”
Rated R, 93 Minutes
Director: Josh Greenbaum
Writer: Dan Perrault
Genre: The kind of comedy where you are mad at yourself afterwards
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Do you enjoy “Beavis and Butt-Head?”
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Do you enjoy “Beavis and Butt-Head?”
