Over the years there have been a few talking dog films such as Homeward Bound and A Dog’s Journey that have got audiences a little teary-eyed. These films are more or less pretty lighthearted despite the emotional impact. Neither of them can hold a candle to Strays though. This is one of the funnier films I’ve seen this year, but it’s very vulgar. Almost to the extent that it’s too vulgar. Most of that comes from the dog voiced by Jamie Foxx.

Reggie (Will Farrell) or as he’s called by his owner Doug (Will Forte) “F##k”. Doug like to throw a tennis ball and have Reggie go fetch it until he’s so fed up with him for running his life that he drives three hours away and says fetch and drives off and leaves Reggie stranded in a city far from home. While he’s trying to get back home he meets some other “Strays” Bug (Jamie Foxx), Hunter (Randall Park), and Maggie (Isla Fisher) Together they teach him the ways of being a stray dog and help him get revenge on his owner who has abandoned him.

This film has a fantastic cast besides the two main dogs and their friends. There are other dogs voiced by Josh Gad and Rob Riggle that bring another funny element to the film. Add in an eagle and Dennis Quaid and there are just so many funny scenes. It’s hard to pick which was the funniest. Even though I have kind of made my mind up on that. It’s the scene where the dogs eat mushrooms from the woods they are traveling in. They hallucinate all kinds of crazy things. It’s a laugh-out-loud moment for sure.

This is one of the more vulgar movies I’ve seen in a while. The Foxx character uses the f-word so much that I thought it had become an everyday part of the lexicon. I just don’t understand why these characters had to use so much vulgar language. That of course made the film rated R which makes it ineligible for kids to see it. This might have been a good family film had it not been for this kind of language and a few other sequences.

Josh Greenbaum the director uses references from other well-known films or pop culture things people will recognize such as Stand by Me where the kids are walking on the train tracks talking about life. In this case, it’s dogs. Also, the famous photo of the people crossing Abbey Road gets parodied as well. Also with the four dogs. This director has a love for so many historical things he threw them in just for the fun of it.

Part of what makes Strays watchable is the main theme of love and affection. Which goes both ways in the human/dog relationship.  A dog needs that human connection and a human sometimes needs that companionship a dog can give. There is a reason why they say a dog is man’s best friend. One sequence allows the viewer to understand this as Reggie says he just wanted his owner to say “good dog” instead of throwing insults at him all the time. This even comes up in another summer movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3.  This is an age-old idiom.  I for one am on board with it. I had a dog for fourteen years and she was my best friend during that time in my life.

There is a sequence later in the film that is set to the music of Miley Cyrus’s famous song called “Wrecking Ball” This scene had me in stitches because the whole concept of it was perfect. The whole film relied on this scene and it was a homerun. Once audiences have a chance to see this film they will no doubt be laughing as much as myself and the crowd I was with when this happened. My applause to the filmmaker for making this decision. It made the movie for me.

Strays relies on a lot of vulgar language and funny humor to get the viewer on board with the story. The story though was good enough if all of this stuff wasn’t in the film it still could have been good. The voice of the cast is fantastic and they did a great job ad-libbing and improvising. There were a number of hilarious moments that made me laugh out loud. The message of the film is its strength and viewers who watch it will come away better for it despite its faults regarding the language.

3 1/2 stars

Dan Skip Allen