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Full disclosure, right off the top: I knew I was going to be a soft touch on “Strays.”

We’re a longtime Boston Terrier family, and I’ve always wondered what our dogs would sound like if they could talk to us. (Surely, I’m not the only one who entertains such insane ideas.) So the prospect of an R-rated comedy in which Jamie Foxx provides the voice of a street-smart Boston named Bug—who drops copious F-bombs, gets high on mushrooms, and humps discarded couches—was very exciting.

“Strays” is pretty much a one-joke movie, one last romp at the end of summer. But it finds enough ways into that joke within its perfectly pithy running time to remain zippy and enjoyable. The way it upends heartwarming dog adventure movie tropes is often hilariously inspired. And there’s great chemistry within the voice cast, particularly between Foxx and star Will Ferrell , who had the unusual benefit of recording together.

Director Josh Greenbaum has shown a flair for out-there comedy with a sweetness at its core in the delightfully bizarre “ Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar ” (2021). He achieves a similar balance with raunchier material in “Strays.” Besides featuring a ton of profanity, the screenplay from Dan Perrault includes plenty of poop and pee jokes (not all of which are entirely puerile), vigorous humping, and some wilderness mayhem that some may find shocking. But the film also explores the importance of identifying and escaping toxic relationships, achieving a sense of self-worth, and basking in the support of deep and unexpected friendships.

I may have teared up a few times. Like I said at the start, a soft touch. Your mileage may vary on this canine road trip.

“Strays” begins on an upbeat note with narration from Ferrell as Reggie, an adorably scruffy Border terrier who’s clueless to the fact that his miserable, abusive owner ( Will Forte ) hates him and keeps trying to abandon him. “Today is going to be the best day ever!” he intones in a sunny manner reminiscent of Margot Robbie ’s optimism at the start of “ Barbie .” And totally coincidentally, “Strays” shares a similar structure to Greta Gerwig ’s mega-blockbuster: Idealistic character leaves home, goes to the “real world,” makes friends, and learns hard truths before returning to fix things with the newfound knowledge. Only in this case, the protagonist’s purpose is literally to bite off his owner’s penis, a more violent form of eviscerating the patriarchy than Barbie ever could imagine. Ferrell is essentially doing a version of his character in “ Elf ” here, mixing wide-eyed enthusiasm with deadpan observations and bringing his signature sincerity to a silly role. As always, he’s a hoot.

After his owner dumps him in a faraway city, Reggie gets help in his quest from the trash-talking Bug, who insists he wants to be a stray and navigates the world with the swagger of a little dog who thinks he’s big. Foxx has fantastic energy here, savoring the musicality of his character’s every profane tirade. Along for the trip are the Australian shepherd Maggie ( Isla Fisher ), a gifted sniffer, and a Great Dane named Hunter ( Randall Park ), a former police K-9 who now works as a therapy dog for the elderly.

Cursing and calamitous antics ensue, much of which you’ve probably already seen in the trailer, but thankfully there are plenty of surprises in store. The visual effects work is mostly seamless, with all of the dogs (and their unseen trainers) giving impressive physical performances. Some of the CGI in the face and mouth movements are distractingly jumpy and inconsistent, especially regarding Bug’s dialogue. Is it too much to ask for total realism in a late-summer talking dog movie?  

The gross-out gags may grow a bit repetitive, but “Strays” ultimately redeems itself by ending on a note that’s feel-good without being cloying. It features some amusing insights into how dogs perceive the world, from fireworks to postal workers. And it just might make you think twice about what that pampered Pomeranian in the expensive sweater is barking about at the dog park.

Now playing in theaters. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Strays (2023)

Rated R for pervasive language, crude and sexual content, and drug use.

Will Ferrell as Reggie (voice)

Jamie Foxx as Bug (voice)

Will Forte as Doug

Isla Fisher as Maggie (voice)

Randall Park as Hunter (voice)

Harvey Guillén

Brett Gelman

Jamie Demetriou

Sofía Vergara as Deliliah the Couch (voice)

• Josh Greenbaum
• Dan Perrault

Cinematographer

• Greg Hayden
• Sabrina Plisco
• David Rennie
• Dara Taylor

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‘Strays’ Review: A Raunchy Comedy Goes to the Dogs

Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx voice two canines on a quest for revenge in this crude live-action feature.

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By Glenn Kenny

The King James Bible is loaded with memorable analogies, and one of the most vivid is from Proverbs: “As a dog returneth to its vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.” It’s true — a dog will do that. A dog might also sample the vomit of another dog, as is depicted in one of the many intestinal, fecal and urinal gags served up in the relentlessly raunchy comedy “Strays.”

Directed by Josh Greenbaum from a script by Dan Perrault, “Strays” tells the story of Reggie (voiced by Will Ferrell), a winsome Border terrier who is abandoned by his owner, the miserable, porn-addict stoner Doug (Will Forte).

Alone in an alley, Reggie gets the come-on from some sexy Afghan hounds. How does prostitution work in unsupervised dog society? It is never explained, just as it’s never explained why the animals speak to each other in English while not understanding the English spoken by the humans. The movie uses a mix of live action and computer animation, but world-building was not quite a priority here.

Once Reggie meets the street-smart Boston terrier Bug (Jamie Foxx) and realizes the extent to which Doug hated him, he resolves to find the man and bite off one of his most beloved extremities. In this quest, the new friends are joined by two domesticated dogs: Hunter (Randall Park), a timid Great Dane, and Maggie (Isla Fisher), an elegant but earthy Australian Shepherd.

Over the next 90-plus minutes, the canines drop as many F-bombs as Pacino did in “Scarface.” Then there are the scatological jokes, each one more outlandish than the last, none bearing the slightest tinge of wit or joy. (The thing about John Waters’s extreme underground comedies is that they had, you know, enthusiasm.) Granted, a scene here that takes aim at the convention of the “narrator dog” does produce a curdled laugh, but it does so on its way to a truly nihilistic punchline.

And yet as that proverb warns, one unfortunately can’t rule out a sequel.

Strays Rated R for relentless language, crude humor and gore. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters.

An earlier version of this review misstated a type of dog in “Strays.” Reggie is a Border terrier, not a mutt. The error was repeated in a picture caption.

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An abandoned dog teams up with other strays to get revenge on his former owner. An abandoned dog teams up with other strays to get revenge on his former owner. An abandoned dog teams up with other strays to get revenge on his former owner.

• Josh Greenbaum
• Dan Perrault
• Will Ferrell
• Isla Fisher
• 244 User reviews
• 130 Critic reviews
• 54 Metascore

• Dolores the Couch
• (as Sofia Vergara)

• Finn the Rottweiler

• (as Philip Morris)

• Underbite Pound Dog

• Afghan Hound
• (as Jaquita Tale)

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Did you know

• Trivia The puppy playing Young Reggie was adopted by director Josh Greenbaum.
• Goofs Maggie is a female dog, but she always pees forward instead of backwards.

Doug : Bad fucking dog.

Reggie : You're goddamn right.

• Crazy credits There is a mid-credit scene between Doug and his doctor.
• Connections Featured in OWV Updates: Multimedia Update (08/10/2023) - OWV is Back! (2023)
• Soundtracks Follow You Written by David Sarazen, Nick Sarazen (as Nicholas Sarazen) Performed by Dave Sarazen Produced by Nick Sarazen (as Nicholas Sarazen)

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 33 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• 12-Track Digital Sound
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• Dolby Atmos
• D-Cinema 48kHz 7.1

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‘Strays’ Review: Crude Dog Comedy Is a Clever Laugh Riot Made for Pet Lovers

The jokes may be juvenile in the new film from the director of “Barb and Star,” but they certainly work

It’s been said, probably, that every movie would be even better with wiener jokes. I don’t think this was said by very mature individuals, nor do I think they were sober when they said it, but I’m pretty sure it’s been said at least once or twice. Probably by college students binge-watching “South Park” and huffing Cheeto dust.

In any case, those amateur philosophers are probably the target audience for “Strays,” a talking animal movie in the illustrious vein of “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” and the Owen Wilson version of “Marmaduke.” But although the majority of films where live-action animals talk with the assistance of flappy-mouthed CGI are made for children — who theoretically are enchanted by such things — “Strays” is full of profanity, jokes about sex and violence, and pervasive themes about abusive relationships.

And while it’s easy to imagine a cranky old critic waving his cane around, complaining about subverting all these family-friendly archetypes, you’ll have to go somewhere else for that. “Strays” is trying to be offensive, and at some point it’ll probably hit your gag reflex (your mileage might vary on when), but it’s also very funny and, in its odd and exceptionally crude way, kinda sweet.

“Strays” stars Will Ferrell as the voice of Reggie, an adorable Border Terrier who absolutely loves his human owner, Doug (Will Forte), who absolutely hates Reggie’s guts. Reggie’s playful shenanigans cost Doug his girlfriend and his favorite bong, and always cuts into his (nearly constant) masturbation schedule.

So Doug drives Reggie out into the country, throws his favorite ball into the woods, and drives away as fast as he can. Then Reggie finds his way back home, “Homeward Bound”-style, and Doug has to run the routine all over again. Because he really hates that dog and that dog really loves him.

When Doug finally drives Reggie three hours outside of town and drops him in the middle of the big city, it seems like the game is over. Reggie is now officially a stray. Fortunately, he’s got an experienced mentor, Bug (voiced by Jamie Foxx), who shows him the ropes. Anything you pee on is yours, for example.

After having the best night of his life with Bug and their friends Hunter (voiced by Randall Park), a former police dog with a cone over his head, and Maggie (voiced by Isla Fisher), whose influencer owner prefers her new, tiny, camera-friendly puppy, Reggie realizes for the first time that Doug never loved him. And that makes Reggie mad. So mad that he decides he’s going find his way back home and bite Doug’s penis off.

This might seem like a bad idea, but only if you’ve never met Doug. “Strays” does an admirable job of making Doug the kind of guy who, if you found out a dog bit his dick off, would make you think “Good dog.” If Doug had any redeeming qualities whatsoever, the plot wouldn’t work. So Will Forte has carte blanche to be the most unlikable character we’ve seen in movies in a long, long time.

Meanwhile, the dogs themselves are adorable, and not just because they’re fluffy. Reggie’s naiveté is balanced by his bravery and loyalty. Pug’s tough exterior masks a wounded soul, and he really cares about Reggie as a friend. And then there’s Hunter and Maggie, who are clearly in love with each other but unable to seal the deal in what dogs call “Regular Style.”

“Strays” was directed by Josh Greenbaum, an award-winning documentarian whose narrative feature debut, “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” is one of the funniest of movies of the decade. Like “Barb and Star,” his latest film looks at first glance like a one-joke wonder, but it always finds new ways to make you laugh. The difference is the jokes in “Strays” have a lot more poop and pee in them. I repeat: A lot more poop and pee.

That might have been enough to make “Strays” a serviceable comedy, but the script by Dan Perrault (“American Vandal”) has some interesting ideas in it. The story is a clever subversion of the “Benji” formula, where instead of a stray dog finding a human family, a stray dog realizes he doesn’t need one. There are also wonderfully funny jokes lampooning other films in the talking animal genre. (The gag about “Narrator Dogs,” who constantly describe what their owners are doing, has a fantastic pay-off.)

As for the film’s hit-you-over-the-head theme about toxic relationships, well, nobody expected “Strays” to be subtle. And while it may be trying, with mixed-bag success, to connect with humans in the audience familiar with similar struggles, it’s genuinely successful at making you remember to go home and give some extra cuddles to your own pets, to whom you are their entire world, and who don’t understand that you’re trying to write a movie review right now and you’ll give them cuddles in a minute, OK? Is that OK? You need cuddles right now, don’t you? Alright, gimme a second…

Where was I? Oh yeah, “Strays.” Like I said before, the film is actively trying to gross you out and it’s very likely to do so. There’s a sequence in the middle where the dogs eat magic mushrooms that goes to a very dark place, and to be perfectly frank, I don’t think that was very funny. The film won me back quickly, but sheesh, read the room next time.

Yet for the most part, “Strays” does what it needs to do. It makes you laugh at dogs doing naughty things, and it makes you remember your pets need cuddles. OK guys, the review is over now. Let’s get you some treats!

“Strays” opens exclusively in theaters on Aug. 18.

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Strays Reviews

I laughed harder and more frequently than just about any movie this year.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 4, 2023

More heartbreaking than funny...

Full Review | Nov 11, 2023

It’s fun, vulgar and represents one of those films meant to be enjoyed on multiple occasions late at night with beers and friends. There exist other things in life that are worse for you.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Oct 12, 2023

While Strays is categorized as a comedy, writer Dan Perrault (American Vandal) relies primarily on sex and toilet humor to bring on the laughs.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5 | Oct 10, 2023

Visually, director Josh Greenbaun doesn't offer anything surprising. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 5, 2023

The idea behind the movie is as stimulating as it is absurd. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 2, 2023

If you like dog-poop gags, you are in for a treat. ... If dog poop makes you gag, you might want to pass on this one.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 23, 2023

I might have liked it more if I saw it when I was thirteen - although many of the movies I saw back then STILL make me laugh - but today, I can't fully recommend it. It's different, yes, but unfortunately, it disappointed me. Full review in Spanish.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 19, 2023

The weird thing about “Strays” is that the few really good jokes aren’t reliant on poop or penises or profanity, but good solid dog humor. … Those jokes are themselves strays, lost and in need of a good home.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 10, 2023

Sometimes you get blindsided by a slab of puerile, asinine comedy and you have no choice but to submit to it as your better judgment and notions of good taste expeditiously swirl straight down the crapper.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2023

It less resembles a comedy movie than one 12-year-old blurting out “penis!” and 15 other kids giggling.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 7, 2023

Strays tries too hard to be edgy without nailing enough actual jokes…Josh Greenbaum’s film aims at something scattershot and scatological, but ends up feeling like something of a dog’s dinner...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 7, 2023

It's uneven and should be sharper than it is, but is the dog movie equivalent of Bad Santa. Very scatological and obscene, but very funny.

Full Review | Sep 7, 2023

For audiences who want to just guffaw over bawdy humour coming out of the mouths of cute pups, Strays will be a winner and will probably have them howling. For anyone who wants a scintilla of humour that isn’t juvenile, they’d best move on.

Full Review | Sep 6, 2023

While cinematic canines have wagged across the silver screen since Rin Tin Tin’s heyday, Strays stands out by recognizing that any “man’s best friend” sentiment does neither side any favors.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 31, 2023

An average, predictable script is rescued from being truly irredeemable by an excellent cast of voice actors and a few bright jokes.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Aug 31, 2023

Greenbaum and Perrault work the R-rated premise to the breaking point and more often than not, beyond, delivering a steady diet of anatomical and excremental humour with almost admirable regularity.

Full Review | Aug 31, 2023

Greenbaum delivers a tape with abundant doses of incorrectness, but correct in formal terms. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 65/100 | Aug 31, 2023

Takes a promising idea for an adult-centered comedy and blows it by shooting for the lowest bar possible.

Full Review | Aug 30, 2023

Testing the limits of canine cuteness, this raunchy revenge comedy might deserve credit for audacity, but even the least discerning moviegoers will realize quickly it’s more bark than bite.

'Strays' Review: This R-Rated Talking Dog Comedy Delivers on Its Filthy Premise

Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx lend their voices to the hilarious new comedy from the team behind 'Barb & Star' and 'Cocaine Bear.'

This review was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn't exist. The R-rated comedy isn't what it used to be. It's not that it declined in quality, as recent films like No Hard Feelings and Joy Ride have demonstrated , but gone are the days of films like Ted , 21 Jump Street , and Bridesmaids dominating the box office. That's why a movie like Strays is so promising. Following in the tradition of Sausage Party , Good Boys , and The Happytime Murders , the new comedy takes something that, from the outside, might appear kid-friendly and morphs it into something edgier and R-rated. Throw in the creatives behind Barb & Star go to Vista del Mar , American Vandal , and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse , and an adorable canine cast voiced by an A-list stars, and you've got yourself a potential winner.

Strays follows Reggie ( Will Ferrell ), a naive two-year-old Border Terrier who is abandoned by his cruel and selfish owner Doug ( Will Forte ), who blames the hapless pup for his girlfriend dumping him. Fortunately, Reggie isn't on his own for too long as he quickly befriends the feisty and street smart Boston Terrier Bug ( Jamie Foxx ), who teaches him the ropes of being a stray. Bug also introduces Reggie to two "non" strays, Maggie ( Isla Fisher ), an Australian Shepard whose young owner has begun to ignore her in favor of a new puppy, and Hunter ( Randall Park ), an anxious and awkward therapy dog who wears a cone. While initially in denial of Doug's abusive and neglectful behavior, Reggie is soon convinced and vows revenge on his former owner. Specifically, he wants to get it by "biting his dick off." Throughout their journey, the four dogs deal with fireworks, mushrooms, killer birds, lost girls, poop, and a sensitive dogcatcher ( Brett Gelman ) all while their perspectives on the world around them start to shift.

RELATED: 'Strays' Director Josh Greenbaum on R-Rated Talking-Dog Comedy, Lord and Miller’s Involvement [Exclusive]

'Strays' Plays out Exactly as Advertised

If you've seen the trailer for Strays , then you should know exactly what to expect. It's 90 minutes of talking dogs constantly cursing, making sex jokes, pooping, and getting into all sorts of trouble. Much of the humor does rely on the novelty of the likes of its furry four-legged cast saying the most inappropriate things imaginable, and while at times it can feel overly juvenile, it still works quite well. Director Josh Greenbaum and screenwriter Dan Perrault inject much of the personality that they brought to prior projects into Strays . They're not trying to cram a hamfisted message into the film or attempting to make the movie into something it's not, and they seem perfectly fine sticking with its crass sense of humor.

Some of the jokes starts to wear thin at times, including a running bit about one of the dog's unusually large genitalia, but as soon as the laughs start to peter out, another comedic bit will play that will have you howling with laughter, so to speak. This includes an uproarious parody of A Dog's Purpose and a handful of unexpected cameos. Even underneath all of its filthiness, Strays still proudly wears its heart on its sleeve. There are themes of getting out of a toxic relationship, building trust, and finding your own makeshift family. It's able to balance all of this without losing its sense of humor or slowing the movie down.

Strays also runs at a brisk runtime of 93 minutes and the intentionally chaotic energy makes it feel even shorter than that. At times this leaves the film feel a bit rushed and repetitive, as the characters find themselves taking detours before returning to the same location that they were at fifteen minutes prior. The plot itself is very loose, but it's doubtful that anyone is going into this movie expecting some unpredictable and memorable story. You're here to see dogs swear like sailors and that's exactly what you'll get.

Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx Memorably Lead the Pack

If you weren't already sold by the sheer concept of Strays , the film also boasts a stellar voice cast led by A-listers like Ferrell and Foxx. Ferrell's voice perfectly fits Reggie's innocence, he's playing it similarly to what he did with Buddy the Elf, but obviously with much less of a filter. While it's already easy to root for an adorable dog in a movie, Ferrell still doesn't phone it in, although he's playing more of the straight man compared to his co-star. Foxx's voice injects so much energy into the foul-mouthed Boston Terrier Bug and, just like with Ferrell, he could have easily phoned in the role. Instead, he opts to go all out and takes full advantage of the film's R-rating. Fisher and Park are equally amusing as Maggie and Hunter, both of whom are clearly having a ball with their roles.

Forte also gets a couple of good laughs as the film's human lead (and villain) Doug, despite only being present during the very beginning and the end of the film. It was a bold choice for Forte to take on this kind of role as his character is designed to make the audience immediately hate him, but he manages to make it work as the porn-addicted, weed-smoking loser who takes pride in his private parts over anything else.

Strays aims to be as raunchy and dirty as a talking dog movie can get, taking full advantage of its premise, although never really going anywhere beyond that. Not all the jokes land perfectly, but those that do illicit some of the biggest and best laughs you'll have at the theater all summer. Those who were left unimpressed by the film's marketing should likely sit this one out, but those looking to embrace their inner middle-schooler sense of humor will have a ball with Strays .

The Big Picture

• Strays delivers exactly what it promises: 90 minutes of talking dogs making inappropriate jokes, cursing, and getting into trouble. The humor may be juvenile at times, but it works well overall.
• The film boasts a stellar voice cast with Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx leading the pack.
• While the plot may feel rushed and repetitive, Strays succeeds at being a raunchy dog movie that doesn't strive to be anything more.

Strays comes to theaters on August 18.

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Strays Is Crude, Rude, and Very Funny

I can’t immediately recall the exact moment that Strays randomly cut away to a shot of three squirrels fucking, but I knew then that the movie had won my heart. Josh Greenbaum’s comedy is built around a simple premise, which is that watching animals act and speak in profane ways is inherently hilarious. That premise is solid. What’s more, that premise is true: Animals are animals, and while sweet, family-friendly quests of discovery like The Incredible Journey certainly have their place, sometimes you just have to let a dog hump the couch. Maybe because on some subconscious level, we ourselves probably wish we could hump that couch. If my cat could speak, I doubt he’d be proper and wise; he’d be foul-mouthed and filter-free.

Reggie (voiced by Will Ferrell), the Border terrier protagonist of Strays , is none of those things. Rather, he’s an innocent dolt with a pothead layabout, Doug (Will Forte), for his ostensible owner. Besides being an all-around dirtbag, Doug also blames the dog for the breakup of his most recent relationship and thus wants desperately to be rid of this eager pup. Doug’s increasingly elaborate efforts to lose Reggie by driving him further and further away are ultimately successful, and our hero finds himself lost in the big city where he befriends a pack of strays led by Bug (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a chatty Boston terrier. Once he realizes that Doug meant to get rid of him, Reggie decides to embark on a quest to find his old human and bite his penis off. Bug joins in, along with Maggie (Isla Fisher), an Australian Shepherd with a keen sense of smell, and Hunter (Randall Park), an anxious Great Dane who had dreams of becoming a K-9 but now works as a therapy dog. (He wears a cone not because he’s recovering from anything, but because it makes him feel safe.)

If you’ve seen the trailer, you pretty much know what the movie is: a constant escalation of rudeness with director Greenbaum and writer Dan Perrault trying to one-up themselves from scene to scene. The film’s bits play off on familiar notions like dogs’ fear of fireworks or their hatred of the mailman, not to mention the idea that you own what you pee on. (This does lead to a particularly funny bonding scene where the dogs pee on each other.) The story doesn’t want to surprise us so much as it wants to live down to our crude expectations. At its best, as with the aforementioned squirrel-a-trois , Strays jolts us with randomness. But most of the time, it’s pleasingly, predictably deranged. Then, just when it seems like it might start to head in a more treacly direction, it turns right back around and gets even nastier. With all its vulgarity, the movie plays to your inner nine-year-old, even though nine-year-olds probably shouldn’t see it.

But beneath all the shit and dick jokes, Strays is also artfully done. The dogs are a combination of real animal performances and VFX, especially when it comes to mouth movements. It’s fairly seamless; the characters seem to move and act mostly like real animals, which in turn makes the profanity that much funnier. Ferrell is an old hand at playing kind-hearted, naïve innocents. This man was Elf , after all. He brings some of that same wide-eyed, childlike energy to the voice of Reggie. Foxx has always been great at playing confident motor-mouths, and he gives Bug a punchy grandiosity that feels just right. For all the iron-clad hilarity of its premise, Strays wouldn’t work nearly as well if it weren’t so well cast.

Strays seeks to fill the shoes of previous movies like Good Boys (they’re kids … and they’re profane!) and Sausage Party (they’re food … and they’re profane!), but it can’t quite reach the heights of those films, which actually had some thematic oomph to them. ( Sausage Party in particular worked its way to a pretty damning exploration of religious belief.) In its sly nods to noble-animal movies and previous journeys of discovery, Strays feels more like a spoof, the kind of movie that only exists in the light of other movies. That’s okay. Its inspired depravity is more than enough for a few good belly laughs, and really, what more does one want from Hollywood in the middle of August?

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Strays Review: A Live-Action Dog Comedy That’s More Impressive Than Funny

Prepare for lots of jokes about humping..

Dogs are silly, funny animals. This is something that people have known for thousands and thousands of years, but it’s a fact that’s particularly been made apparent in the internet age, with social media sites featuring an endless stream of videos from pet owners who catch their canine companions acting weird. They display unique personalities, but there are also universal bizarre behaviors that have been well documented and mocked – from their need to walk in tight circles before lying down, to scooting their butt on the floor, to humping just about anything.

Release Date: August 18, 2023 Directed By: Josh Greenbaum Written By: Dan Perrault Starring: Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher, Randall Park, and Will Forte Rating: R for pervasive language, crude and sexual content, and drug use Runtime: 93 minutes

The pervasiveness of this kind of internet content is a big hindrance to Strays , the new film from director Josh Greenbaum. The movie has no shortage of ambition, as it executes its feature-length story and action with four real dogs as its protagonists, but it ends up being more impressive than funny. It has its comedic bright spots, including a satisfying finale, but it relies far too heavily on pointing at commonly recognized idiosyncrasies and aims consistently at low-hanging fruit. Far too much of it is comparable to a live-action remake of The Secret Life Of Pets (albeit with more obscene language and behavior).

Written by Dan Perrault, Strays tells the tale of Reggie ( Will Ferrell ), a naïve, optimistic Border Terrier trapped unknowingly trapped in an abusive relationship. His owner is Doug ( Will Forte ), a shiftless asshole who adopted Reggie when he was in a relationship and blames the dog for his breakup. Doug regularly tries to get rid of his pet by driving him off to a far location, tossing a tennis ball, and leaving, but Reggie always just gets the ball and comes back to his home in the suburbs.

Frustrated by the pup’s regular returns, Doug eventually decides to drive miles away to the nearest city and drop Reggie off in a dark alley – which is where he ends up meeting a Boston Terrier named Bug ( Jamie Foxx ) who changes his life. He not only comes to understand that his owner is a horrible person but also the joys of being a stray. He learns to appreciate his new freedom, but he also decides that his relationship with his owner is not quite over. With help from Bug as well as a Great Dane named Hunter ( Randall Park ) and an Australian Shepherd named Maggie ( Isla Fisher ), Reggie makes it his mission to return back to Doug and bite his penis off.

The comedy in Strays is too dependent on references to  humorous dog behaviors and doesn't have enough original material.

As far as revenge plots go, Strays is packed with a winner, and it’s at its best when it is heavily leaning into its R-rating – but there is a shortage of material in that department and it doesn’t have much in the way for fresh observational humor. The introduction of Bug, as an example, sees the tiny hound face off with a Rottweiler and a Dobermann, and he ends up scaring the bigger dogs off by acting like a psychopath. Anyone who has ever seen a canine interaction like this before in real life can smile in recognition, but it’s not made uproariously funny no matter how crass Jamie Foxx gets in his voice over.

Most of the movie operates with this kind of humor, and it’s diverting, but not hilarious. It eventually feels like there was a checklist involved in the construction of the script, with various bits and references peppered into the characters’ journey from the city back to Doug’s house. Humping things? Check. Eating vomit? Check. Hating the mailman? Check. To the film’s credit, it doesn’t overplay the cliché dogs vs. cats dynamic, but it is still used as the source of a joke (as though the filmmakers just couldn’t help themselves).

The bright spots come when the film moves away from that kind of material, like with the penis biting plot and a bit involving what Bug describes as a “Narrator Dog,” but they get buried in all of the tropes. The talented cast does what it can to add to the comedy, and they do successfully imbue their characters with specific personalities, but it only gets the movie so far.

Strays is an impressive feat of filmmaking and is able to do surprising and awesome things with the canine stars.

It’s possible that some of the better comedic bits conceptualized behind the scenes ended up not being feasible without an over-reliance on visual effects, but if Strays does one thing particularly well, it’s showcasing the shocking capabilities of canine performers. Along with some skillful cinematography and editing, it’s remarkable just how natural it looks when two or more of the dogs are in a scene having a conversation. The voice -over performances never feel non-diegetic, as the animal actors are always engaged in any given scene, and their actions appear realistic instead of either rehearsed or incidental.

In its own way, Strays affirms the old Hollywood adage about working with animals (and children). In this case, it’s not an actor who gets outshined by a furry co-star, but the film’s comedy sensibilities in general. It’s 93 minutes of movie magic, but far from the funniest feature of 2023.

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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Strays Review: A Glorious Gross-Out Comedy That Barks Up The Right Tree

After years of doubting the viability of cinema releases, "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" have effectively put those fears to rest ... at least for a while. After one big blockbuster after another, August seems surprisingly light, with major players seemingly afraid to try and compete with the Barbenheimer craze. With the undeniable success of "Oppenheimer," Universal Pictures are seeking to continue its run with a film that is the polar opposite of the Cillian Murphy-led biopic: a talking dog movie.

The mere phrase "talking dog movie" is enough elicit groans. While talking-animal movies are prominent in animation, the live-action counterparts tend to be various levels of unbearable — consider "Marmaduke," "Think Like A Dog," or the "Cats & Dogs" franchise. But "Strays" seeks to buck the trend of disastrous talking-dog movies, and it's got some surprising pedigree behind it. Directed by Josh Greenbaum (who also helmed the vastly underappreciated "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), "Strays" is written by Dan Perrault ("American Vandal"), and produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. That's a tantalizing (and very funny) group of people, but as we've seen time and time again, even the most promising names don't always deliver.

Thankfully, that's not the case with "Strays," a riotously funny movie that perfectly scratches the itch of a need for silly, stupid movies. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that made me laugh so hard I was actually hurting, but "Strays" delivers a number of stand-out moments that are so ludicrously silly — and so jaw-droppingly disgusting — that I found myself on the verge of tears throughout the movie. For those averse to gross-out humor, "Strays" is not the one for you — I noticed countless people hiding from the screen during the film. While so many movies about dogs treat man's best friend like an omnipotent, all-knowing, and relentlessly adorable companion, "Strays" gets that dogs are silly, often disgusting animals. That might sound like a disservice to canines, but as a lifelong dog lover (and one-time dog dad), I was thrilled to see a movie that understands everything that makes dogs so incredibly special — flaws and all.

A tail-wagging good time

"Strays" also challenges the very idea of dogs being man's best friend, instead offering a look into a life of a dog who is man's biggest enemy. There is nothing in the world that Reggie (Will Ferrell) loves more than Doug (Will Forte), his pot-smoking, deadbeat owner, who only kept Reggie after a break-up because he wanted his ex-girlfriend to be unhappy. Doug can't stand the sight of Reggie and does everything in his power to make Reggie's life miserable. He even tries to get rid of Reggie, continually driving him far away, throwing a tennis ball, and then driving away before Reggie can get back in the car, hoping to be done with him for good. But every time, Reggie returns. 

That sounds depressing, doesn't it? But what "Strays" does perfectly is to funnel this through the perspective of Reggie, mining an upsetting situation for dark and deliciously funny comedy. The opening sequence, narrated by Ferrell, lets us in on how much fun Reggie finds his life, completely oblivious to the disdain radiating off his owner. The scene encapsulates the innocence of dogs while simultaneously offering twisted, shocking observations on human and animal behavior. It's the kind of thing "Strays" does brilliantly throughout the film, and if you thought the best moments of the film were all in the trailer, rest assured that it only scratches the surface of one of the most surprising movies of the year.

It's not long before Reggie loses the game with Doug (he calls it "fetch and f***") and finds himself abandoned in the city. It's there he finds Bug (Jamie Foxx), a tiny pug who talks a big game. He introduces Reggie to the world of stray dogs, and offers him a new ethos on life — instead of living to please man, it's time Reggie lives to do whatever he wants. Bug also connects Reggie with his friends Maggie (Isla Fisher), a confident sniffer dog ignored by her owner in favor of a young puppy, and Hunter (Randall Park), a sweet, sensitive, well-hung (a legitimately important plot point) dog who works in an old folks home. The four form a fast friendship, bonding over a love of eating their own poop, a hatred of fireworks, and a desire to live life on their own terms.

I can't really overstate what a delightful surprise "Strays" is. Many comedies of late offer a non-stop flurry of jokes for the first couple of acts, before acquiescing to emotional fulfillment, leaving the laughs behind in favor of character development. While "Strays" does take a few beats to get emotional and tap into its characters' histories, it never stops being the ridiculous, silly, and knowingly stupid movie it is. And that's an all-too-rare, but totally wonderful thing. "Strays" is never better than when it leans into getting laughs, and it never really stops going for the jugular. For its blissful 93 minutes, it never stops being an all-out comedy.

A diamond in the woof

Though Reggie is convinced Doug loves and misses him, Bug, Maggie, and Hunter help him realize that Doug was nothing short of a horrible owner. When Reggie discovers the truth (which doesn't take very long, the movie is only 93 minutes long), he decides to get revenge: He's going to bite Doug's d**k off.

Yes, "Strays" is about a group of dogs banding together to get revenge on a bad human. Amid reports of animal shelters all over the world being at capacity thanks to people getting puppies during the pandemic and returning them when they became unruly, it feels especially timely. Through all the absurdity, an endless barrage of swear words, and graphic humor (please, don't take your young children to see this movie), "Strays" has a really valuable message at its core: for the love of all that's holy, be good to your pets.

Though I had a feeling "Strays" could be special, I'm still pretty floored by just how hilarious it is. Perrault's script finds an excellent balance of wince-worthy humor and genuine heart, and the voice acting is more than spirited enough to make up for the inevitable issues with trying to make animals emote like humans. It has no interest in being high-brow or making any grand statements — it just wants to make you laugh with potty humor and hilarious observations. Throw in a blast of a soundtrack, and the most surprising and utterly perfect needle drop of the year, and "Strays" might just be the "Citizen Kane" of silly, stupid movies.

/Film Rating: 8 out of 10

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Strays review: a one-trick dog comedy

“Strays is a sporadically funny, but frustratingly one-note R-rated comedy.”

• Exceptionally well-cast vocal performances
• Several laugh-out-loud moments
• Numerous gross-out moments that land with a thud
• A second act that drags
• A one-note, raunchy sense of humor

With Strays , what you see is what you get. The film’s trailers have sold it as an R-rated comedy about a bunch of foul-mouthed dogs who decide to try and get revenge on a nasty previous owner. It is, for better or worse, exactly that. Directed by Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar director Josh Greenbaum and produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, Strays is a raunchy comedy that tries to mine as much as it possibly can from the mere idea that dogs’ inner thoughts might not be nearly as sanitized as humans like to think.

If that sounds like a small resource for a 95-minute comedy to try and sustain itself on, that’s because it is. Strays is, in many ways, the same few jokes repeated over and over again for an hour-and-a-half. In certain instances, it works as a perfectly enjoyable, admirably vulgar studio comedy, bhe cumulative effect of the film could better be described as mildly irritating rather than laugh-out-loud funny. Ultimately, the movie is a minor, forgettable effort for all involved, including its selection of well-cast voice actors.

Strays doesn’t waste any time setting up its story. In its thankfully succinct prologue, the film introduces viewers to Reggie (voiced by Will Ferrell), a scrappy young dog who is blindly in love with his abusive, self-involved owner, Doug (Will Forte). When Doug, who spends more time getting high and complaining about his life than he does taking care of Reggie, realizes that he’s on the verge of being evicted, he decides to rid himself of his dog owner responsibilities once and for all. In order to do so, he gets into the habit of driving Reggie miles away from his house and throwing a tennis ball into the distance in the hope that he’ll be able to leave his dog completely stranded.

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One day, Doug succeeds when he drops Reggie off in a city hours away from their home. Reggie, still as innocent as ever, quickly strikes up a friendship with one of the city’s other stray dogs, Bug (voiced by Jamie Foxx), whose bad attitude, but undying loyalty makes him an ideal companion for Ferrell’s naive pup. As Bug tries to explain what stray life can be like to Reggie, he introduces him to two of his closest friends: a therapy dog named Hunter (voiced by Randall Park) and Maggie (voiced by Isla Fisher), the frustrated first dog of a social media-obsessed influencer.

While Bug, Hunter, and Maggie succeed in making Reggie feel welcome in their city, they aren’t as successful in getting his former owner out of his mind. On the contrary, he decides he needs to find his way back to Doug so that he can violently repay him for all the abuse that was unloaded on him over the years. When Maggie, Hunter, and Bug subsequently agree to accompany him on his mission, they unexpectedly set out on a journey filled with more outlandish moments, bathroom jokes, and twists of fate than even the most prepared viewer will likely see coming. Unfortunately, not all of Strays ’ second-act gags work as well as the few that do.

The film’s most successful jokes include a subversive reference to the Josh Gad-starring A Dog’s Purpose movies from 2017 and 2019, which present a far sweeter version of a canine’s everyday life than Strays . The reference in question comes near the film’s midpoint and it takes a turn that not only comes out of nowhere, but packs a greater sustained punch than nearly every other joke that Strays has to offer. The film’s other noteworthy highlight, meanwhile, is an acid trip sequence that’s easily Strays ‘ most experimental and visually ambitious — and it pays off in a way that is both fittingly mean-spirited and genuinely funny.

One of the reasons why Strays ’ hallucinatory drug trip sequence lands as well as it does is that it’s one of the few moments in the film where Greenbaum seems genuinely comfortable with changing up its otherwise flat visual language. For most of its runtime, Strays is forced by the very nature of its story to adopt as low-key a visual style as possible, one that allows Greenbaum and company to constantly highlight the surprisingly expressive faces of its four canine leads. That problem, while largely unavoidable, just makes Strays ’ slowest sections all the more noticeable.

Despite its relatively short runtime, there are stretches throughout Strays ’ second and third acts that drag, usually as a direct result of the film’s one-note sense of humor. Its few highlights and admirable creative swings aside, Strays fails to find consistently new and satisfying ways to mine comedy out of its paper-thin premise. In order to try and make up for that fact, the movie relies on the kind of poop and pee jokes that are both painfully obvious and ineffective. Strays is, therefore, exactly the film that you likely think it is.

If you found its premise and trailers intriguing, the odds are high that you’ll likely have a good time with Strays . If you didn’t, then you definitely won’t. There’s nothing deeper hiding beneath the surface of Strays , nor are there enough clever twists on its story to make it anything more than one of this year’s most forgettable studio comedies to date.

Strays is now playing in theaters.

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Strays review: will ferrell & jamie foxx are a great duo in awkward comedy.

Though it makes some attempts at finding genuine heart (and does at times succeed), Strays' contrasting tones makes for an awkward watch.

• "Strays" takes a raunchy and unconventional approach to dog movies, with drugs, crude jokes, and lots of poop, making it not for everyone.
• The film pokes fun at dog movie tropes, but often resorts to simple and lowbrow humor, sacrificing the sweetness and charm of the dogs.
• Despite its profane comedy, "Strays" does touch on emotional elements and offers a satisfying ending, though some jokes miss the mark.

Editor's note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn't exist.

It's probably safe to say that, when you think of dog movies, you think of the inspiring, heart-warming flicks where a dog bonds with their human companions and traverses the ups and downs of life alongside them, as seen with A Dog's Purpose or Marley & Me . Strays , the raunchy new movie from director Josh Greenbaum, takes the exact opposite track. Pushing the R rating to the extreme, Strays takes its eponymous pups on their own adventure, albeit one with drugs, many dick jokes, and lots and lots of poop. This is not a movie that will appeal to everyone, and occasionally seems driven more by shock value than anything else. Though it makes some attempts at finding genuine heart (and does at times succeed), Strays ' contrasting tones makes for an awkward, intermittently funny watch.

Sweet terrier Reggie (Will Ferrell) thinks he has the perfect life with owner Doug (Will Forte), who loves to play catch with him over and over again. What he doesn't realize is that Doug, a lazy, repulsive person, loathes him with every fiber of his being, and that the games of catch are meant to send him away. After Doug leaves Reggie hours away in an unfamiliar city, the tiny pup meets Bug (Jamie Foxx), a street-wise stray who quickly takes Reggie under his wing and teaches him the ways of being alone as a dog. As Reggie comes to grips with the fact that Doug wasn't a very good owner, he sets a new goal: Return home and exact revenge. With the help of fellow dogs Hunter (Randall Park), Maggie (Isla Fisher), and Bug, Reggie sets out on his biggest journey yet.

Strays is at its best when it is poking fun at the well-known tropes of dog movies, as seen during a quick interaction with a dog voiced by A Dog's Purpose narrator Josh Gad. Unfortunately, the movie is more interested in going for the simplest forms of humor, putting the dogs in situations where they accidentally get high, hump anything they can, and pee on each other. In the screening I attended, this prompted bouts of uncomfortable laughter, particularly in the moment where Reggie and his friends eat a bunch of mushrooms and get into some real, horrifying trouble. Greenbaum is eager to push the envelope of what adorable dogs can do, though they lose some of their sweetness after the millionth comment about Hunter's sizable anatomy.

At the same time, Strays isn't averse to a more emotional tone, whether that be through revealing the truth about Bug's backstory or addressing Reggie's abusive relationship with Doug. These serious elements don't always mesh well with the profane comedy, but they do serve to deepen the narrative and show Strays has more to offer than another joke about how dogs have sex. It should also be said that the ending is very satisfying, both in terms of Doug's fate and where each dog winds up. There's some predictability here, but that's okay. Having a hunch about where things will end doesn't diminish the overall impact.

Strays ' voice cast also proves to be a highlight. Ferrell nails Reggie's naivete and curiosity, while Foxx deftly shows there's more to Bug than the bravado he constantly puts on. Park and Fisher are both excellent additions to the cast, though their characters are often whittled down to a handful of facts, such as Hunter's large genitals and Maggie's recent abandonment by her owner. Reggie and Bug are the more developed characters by far, but Strays doesn't seem too concerned with that either. The punchlines are the most important part, and not all of them land.

Strays has some smarts to offer, and it's hard not to find some enjoyment in watching dogs run around onscreen. At the same time, its determination to always seek out the raunchiest, most unsettling situations for its characters brushes up awkwardly with its more heartfelt moments. There is almost certainly an audience for Strays , found within those who like lots of jokes about human excrement and sexual activities. For those who don't like that, though, there isn't enough of anything else to entice them.

Strays is now playing in theaters. It is 93 minutes long and rated R for pervasive language, crude and sexual content, and drug use.

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Strays review: Will Ferrell's dog comedy just chases its tail

Jamie foxx and will forte fetch some laughs as foul-mouthed pups, but mostly this dog just rolls over and plays dead.

Strays feels an awful lot like a movie written on a dare. Screenwriter Dan Perrault, of American Vandal acclaim, seems to be working with the kind of premise that could have been conceived in a late-night haze of juvenile giggling: what if those overly sentimental dog movies that teach profound lessons from a canine viewpoint were instead full of swearing and poop gags? But rather than unleashing jokes that practically write themselves, and despite a seasoned cast of comedy stalwarts, the punchlines here are kept on a short lead.

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When Border Terrier Reggie (Will Ferrell) is left by his abusive owner Doug (Will Forte) in the big city after a game of fetch three hour’s drive from home, the little guy still has hope that he can bring his ball back and win Doug’s love. However, a street-smart Boston Terrier stray named Bug (Jamie Foxx) bursts that bubble, breaking the news that Doug has abandoned Reggie, then offers to teach him the ropes of living without human affection. Accompanied by a smart Australian Shepherd named Maggie (Isla Fisher) and a be-coned Great Dane named Hunter (Randall Park), Reggie and Bug party it up in the city until Reggie arrives at a plan for the ultimate revenge: biting off Doug’s beloved penis.

This sets off a road trip story with the usual beats reinterpreted through the lens of puppy hijinks. A visit to a carnival goes apocalyptic as fireworks start going off. A patch of mushrooms triggers a surreal set of hyperactive hallucinations. A trip to the pound culminates in a red-rocketing shit-slipping escape. It’s admittedly fun to see these stoner comedy pastiches translated through the naiveté and shamelessness of dogs, even if the dogs have a somewhat inconsistent understanding of human culture. (Cleaning up poop is a confusing concept, but they know who Hitler is?) And Reggie’s coming to terms with his abusive relationship with Doug is an effective emotional throughline that works independent of the comedy, giving the film more reason to exist than just to deliver puppy punch lines.

And yet those jokes are just fleas bouncing around on Strays’ solid backbone. The observational humor the dogs impart is, at its core, no less tired and treacly than the Homeward Bound s and A Dog’s Journey s that it seeks to lampoon, just with a lot more swearing and frankness about genitalia. There is one joke that hilariously mocks the convention of dogs narrating their owners’ life story, but the film never rises to that same level again, generally content to craft one-liners about how dogs sure do love to hump the strangest things, often calling back to previous gags with the subtlety of beating a dead cat. It’s like watching an episode of South Park where the sum total of the social commentary is that dogs love the taste of poop. Not the worst way to spend one’s time, but it’s hard not to want something a bit more insightful.

To the film’s credit, it’s directed and performed well. Director Josh Greenbaum follows up the transcendently hilarious Barb And Star Go To Vista Del Mar with the thankless task of wrangling dog actors with computer-generated mouth movements, but for what it’s worth the comic framing and timing are great, even when the actual material is not. Each of the main voice actors is typically typecast, with Ferrell playing predictably gullible, Foxx as brashly insecure, Fisher as the competent woman, and Park as the timidly polite lug. But they’re all great at playing those roles, so there isn’t much to complain about, with Park in particular standing out with some of the best vulgar material to work with.

Perhaps there was always a ceiling on how good Strays could be, with most of its promise baked into the novelty of its premise and not its potential to find new jokes to tell within that premise. For what it’s worth, Strays is nominally funny, but in a way that rarely provokes genuine laughs, just chuckles of appreciation. It’s a breezy, inconsequential film that will drip from the wrinkles of your brain like slobber from a chew toy, but as a late-summer distraction, maybe that’s enough. It’s just hard not to shake the feeling that there should have been a hilarious squeaker hidden amongst all the mildly amusing fluff.

Strays opens in theaters on August 18

• Action/Adventure
• Children's/Family
• Documentary/Reality
• Amazon Prime Video

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Strays’ on Prime Video, an Unapologetically Raunchy, Stupidly Funny Talking-Dog Flick

Where to stream:.

• Strays (2023)

‘Sugar’ Episode 4 Recap: Sins of the Brother

‘sugar’ episode 3 recap: who goes there, ‘live’s kelly ripa recalls one thanksgiving when her dog chewie was caught “going to town” on the ham “in the middle of the dining room table”, kelly ripa tells ‘live’ audience “i don’t want to be here” after her aging dog had a “bad day” yesterday: “feel like i need to get home”.

An alternate title for Strays ( now streaming on Amazon Prime Video ) could be Look Who’s Saying F— Now . It’s the heartwarming story of a scruffy little dog who speaks with the voice of Will Ferrell, and dreams of returning home so he can gnaw on the gonads of the owner who abandoned him. You can just feel your heart about to burst, can’t you? Director Josh Greenbaum follows up his people-will-laugh-at-anything-during-a-global-pandemic comedy Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar with this crude, nasty, insanely R-rated, unabashedly scatological talking-animal adventure that eventually broke down my boundaries like a brawny stream of Rottweiler whiz to a snowbank. I’m better than this, you’re better than this, we’re ALL better than this, but it’s also OK if I, you and we laughed our asses off while watching it.

STRAYS : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Reggie (Ferrell) is a Border Terrier, which is one of those absurdly photogenic little dogs who exist to nip at the heels of a kid, chasing a tennis ball for hours on sunny Saturday afternoons. So it’s all the more tragic that Reggie ended up with Doug (Will Forte), a sloppy, unemployed serial masturbator who doesn’t love his dog or himself or life or existence or anything, really. Doug’s ex-girlfriend loved Reggie, and when she finally wised up and dumped Doug, he kept the dog purely out of spite. Reggie doesn’t understand any of this; he interprets Doug’s abuse as love, and therefore has pledged his heart to this angry, self-hating loser. How devoted is Reggie? He thinks Doug’s multiple attempts to abandon him is a game, which Reggie wins every time he manages to follow his nose home from various far-off locales. Poor pup doesn’t realize he’s in a relationship that makes The Burning Bed look like a Hallmark rom-com.

Now, we could translate Reggie’s codependency as symptomatic of being a stereotypically loyal dog, and we wouldn’t be too far off-base. But we’ll soon learn that such naivete isn’t inherent to all canines, at least in this movie. Exasperated by Reggie’s fierce devotion, and angry that the pup accidentally broke his favorite bong, Doug drives a few hours to a city, drops him in a scuzzy vacant lot and speeds away. And now Reggie’s the dog equivalent of a fish out of water, a situation remedied by Bug (Jamie Foxx), a hardened Boston Terrier from the streets who teaches him the Way of the Stray, which is a phrase I made up, not the movie. It involves staking your claim to territory by urinating on things, knowing where you can get a hearty slice of dropped pizza, stuff like that. They befriend an Australian Shepherd named Maggie (Isla Fisher) and a Great Dane named Hunter (Randall Park), whose relationship to his Cone of Shame is kinda like Linus to his security blanket. The four dogs bond as a pack when they get drunk on garbage water and find some lovely inanimate objects to mount. 

It’s probably not worth noting the romantic tension between Maggie and Hunter, evident by what’s happening with Hunter’s little red rocket down there, which isn’t little at all (I mean, he’s a Great Dane after all). It’s also probably not worth noting that Bug is in love with a couch he used to routinely desecrate during his time as a family pet, the details of which are revealed later in a tear-soaked flashback. But here I am noting these things anyway, as examples of this movie’s brand of comedy, which is on level with a squat toilet. Bug, Hunter and Maggie all look a little cockeyed at Reggie when he tells them his backstory, and about how he thinks Doug reciprocates his unconditional love. So they break the truth to him: Poor Reggie’s in an abusive relationship. In the light of this harsh reality, Bug and Hunter and Maggie vow, come hell or high water, to help Reggie make the long and arduous journey home so he can bite Doug’s dick off. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Babe: Pig in the City , Homeward Bound , Look Who’s Talking Now , the Marmaduke with Owen Wilson, Sausage Party and, perhaps for obvious reasons, Trash Humpers .

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Reggie is a naif pooch who’s kinda the canine version of Buddy the Elf, and even though this is something Ferrell can do in his sleep, the shtick is, at least in this context, pretty funny. 

Memorable Dialogue: Reggie envies the thing that Doug loves the most: “Sometimes I wish I was a penis!”

Sex and Skin: Does a Great Dane boner or a mutt mounting a garden gnome count?

Our Take: Strays is lowbrow and moronic, obsessed with poop and puke, crudely hacked together and seemingly written by and for prepubescent boys to sneak-watch when their parents aren’t paying attention. Its visual acuity is hampered by the limitations of working with a primary cast consisting of trained animals. It’s frequently stomach-churning, and the ickiest scenes tend to linger like the last drunk to stumble out of the party. For a while, I was unamused. Then I was surprised by the poignant manner in which Greenbaum handled the heartbreaking stories of how some of these dogs became strays, which skewed the film’s grossout factor from 95 percent to, well, about 94 percent.

And then , the needle drops on Miley Cyrus’ ‘Wrecking Ball’ during the movie’s big climactic sequence, and I roared and cackled and let it all out and wiped a few tears from my eyes and felt good about it. It happens: Sometimes you get blindsided by a slab of puerile, asinine comedy and you have no choice but to submit to it as your better judgment and notions of good taste expeditiously swirl straight down the crapper. 

Prior to that, Strays struck me as a borderline-tolerable spoof of family-movie and revenge-flick tropes propped up by a clunky assemblage of cute-dogs-doing-ugly-things cognitive-dissonance gags. It indulges many cliches of road comedies, you know, the inevitable scenes where the protagonists accidentally ingest hallucinogenic drugs, get thrown in jail, etc. (narrative traps, I have to note, recently employed by Book Club: The Next Chapter – or was it 80 for Brady ? I can’t tell these things apart anymore). But once in a while an inspired ending swoops in to salvage things, pushing them from marginal to watchable – and in this case, kind of almost maybe probably endearing, because what kind of j-hole doesn’t root for the well-being of lost dogs? Nobody’s going to accuse the movie of being a thoughtful examination of physical and emotional abuse, or a tender story about outcasts finding strength and affirmation in their newfound friendships. But it might just inspire some healthy, cleansing laughter, which you might not expect from a movie that’s essentially about dogs sniffing each other’s hindquarters. 

Our Call: I liked this stupid-ass movie and I’m not going to apologize for it. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

• Prime Video
• Stream It Or Skip It

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‘Strays’ movie review: raunchy comedy does it doggy style, but it’s a good boy at heart

• August 18, 2023
• ★★★ , Movie Reviews

A ragtag group of canines undertake a mission to get revenge on an abusive owner in Strays , which opens in Prague cinemas and worldwide this weekend. Most local screenings are of a Czech-dubbed version of the film, but the original English-language print can be caught at Cinema City Slovanský dům , Edison Filmhub , and other limited engagements.

Strays is the talking animal version of Sausage Party , which featured animated food products, or Good Boys , which starred a pair of sixth graders; it’s a one-joke premise that gets its mileage from the fact that audiences aren’t used to seeing these characters in such a vulgar context.

Directed by Josh Greenbaum ( Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar ) from a script by Dan Perrault ( American Vandal ), Strays makes the most of that premise by having it’s adorable canines spew a relentless torrent of f-bombs from the voices of Will Ferrell , Isla Fisher , Randall Park , and (especially) Jamie Foxx .

While the dogs are voiced by a human cast, meanwhile, they’re played quite wonderfully by real canines with a minimal amount of CGI used to animate their mouths. The effect here is far less unsettling than your average Beverly Hills Chihuahua or Cats & Dogs , and manages to create some authentic-feeling characters; kudos the on-set handlers and animal actors themselves for carrying the film.

Strays stars a Ferrell-voiced Border Terrier as Reggie, long-neglected by his hate-filled owner Doug (a particularly nasty Will Forte ), and ultimately abandoned on the streets of the big city. While initially eager to make make his way back home, some fellow strays – a Boston Terrier voiced by Fox, a Great Dane voiced by Park, and an Australian Shepherd voiced by Fisher – help him understand the years of abuse suffered at the hands of his former owner.

With this newfound knowledge, Reggie sets out to make his way back to Doug with his new friends in tow – but now, with vengeance in his eyes. And Strays becomes an unusual and effective revenge fantasy told from the perspective of the dogs.

It must be said that Strays isn’t very funny: the one-joke nature of the premise can only take it so far, and Perrault’s script rarely ventures beyond the obvious for a gag. A brief cameo from Dennis Quaid is the film’s only attempt at more offbeat humor, and it’s one real laugh-out-loud moment.

Strays is pretty gross, meanwhile, and includes sexualized scenes of the dogs that would receive an NC-17 rating if these were human characters, plenty of vomit and urine, helpless smaller critters torn to shreds, and what must be the highest amount of fecal matter ever seen in a mainstream Hollywood production. Still, there’s little here that a dog owner won’t encounter on a daily basis.

But what saves Strays is its commitment to its vengeance-fueled narrative. You never really know if the movie will deliver on its outrageous promise, but the climax of this movie is one of the most satisfying moments of revenge fantasy ever delivered on screen. Be sure to stick around for a mid-credits scene that adds the chef’s kiss.

And when Strays gets sentimental after 80 minutes of grossout doggy business, and Reggie finally hears a “good boy” for the very first time, be prepared to even shed a tear.

• 2023 , Aven Lotz , Brett Gelman , Charity Cervantes , Dan Perrault , David Herman , Dennis Quaid , Dexter Masland , Garrett Hines , Greta Lee , Hannah Alline , Harvey Guillén , Hedy Nasser , Isla Fisher , Jack De Sanz , Jade Fernandez , Jamie Demetriou , Jamie Foxx , Jaquita Ta'le , Jimmy Tatro , Josh Gad , Josh Greenbaum , Keith Brooks , Mikayla Rousseau , Mike Dolphy , Phil Morris , Randall Park , Rob Riggle , Sofia Vergara , Strays , Will Ferrell , Will Forte

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Revenge dog-com is off the leash with drug use, swearing.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Underlying the over-the-top humor is the message t

The four main canine characters are misfits around

Main characters are dogs; they're voiced by Black

A dog mauls a villain in a purposely unrealistic s

Implied human masturbation. Dog humping. Erection

Pervasive, extreme profanity/insults, including "f

Bong hits on camera. Psychedelic drug trip that's

Parents need to know that Strays is a lowbrow comedy that may be about talking dogs and feature Will Ferrell as an adorable pup named Reggie but is definitely not for kids. Reggie is treated terribly by his human owner, and some of the movie's laughs come from contrasting Reggie's trusting point-of…

Positive Messages

Underlying the over-the-top humor is the message that pets deserve to be treated with the love they give their human companions.

Positive Role Models

The four main canine characters are misfits around the dog park but band together to form a supportive friendship -- including helping a friend in an abusive relationship realize that it's time to leave. But the dogs are also pretty crude and speak disrespectfully to just about everyone. A K-9 cop takes a gentle approach to her job.

Diverse Representations

Main characters are dogs; they're voiced by Black actor Jamie Foxx, Korean American actor Randall Park, and White actors Will Ferrell and Isla Fisher. Positive human characters include a Black female police officer and a Black Girl Scout and her little brother. Supporting dog voices and human actors are Black, Latino, and Asian.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

A dog mauls a villain in a purposely unrealistic scene that's played for comedy and positioned as justifiable. Bloody animal carcasses. Dogs are in significant peril when captured by a predator. References to severe animal neglect and abuse presented humorously. Threat of injury. Significant fall played for comic effect.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Implied human masturbation. Dog humping. Erection jokes, including images of an erect dog penis. Animal sex. Images of scantily dressed women on posters in sexually provocative poses. Sexual come-on. Human nudity from the backside. Pubic hair. Extreme close-up of dog anus. Box labeled "porn."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Pervasive, extreme profanity/insults, including "f--k," "ass," "a--hole," "balls," "bitch," "boner," "c--k," "d--k," "goddamn," "losers," "morons," "motherf----r," "porn," "p--sy," "s--t," and "stupid" and "Jesus Christ!" as an exclamation.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Bong hits on camera. Psychedelic drug trip that's pleasurable for the character experiencing it but has consequences. Beer drinking is portrayed as fun and is supported by the comment "I like it." Drug paraphernalia.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Strays is a lowbrow comedy that may be about talking dogs and feature Will Ferrell as an adorable pup named Reggie but is definitely not for kids. Reggie is treated terribly by his human owner, and some of the movie's laughs come from contrasting Reggie's trusting point-of-view with his owner's ugly attitude and behavior. Then Reggie decides to get revenge. The movie transforms sweet, innocent pets into obscene "bros": Be ready for simulated human masturbation, animal sex (and constant dog humping), a tornado of pubic hair, a naked male backside, and a very erect dog penis. Violent scenes/references are largely played for humor and include the canine characters seriously mauling and maiming others, to bloody effect on a couple of occasions. Bloody animal carcasses are also seen, and there are references to severe animal neglect and abuse. The dogs curse constantly ("c--k," "d--k," "s--t," and nonstop use of "f--k"), and drug use and drinking are depicted as fun bonding experiences between friends. Underlying everything in this over-the-top "tail" is a message that, while not preachy, can't be missed: Be kind to pets. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (6)
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Based on 6 parent reviews

Very good movie but raunchy at times.

Who new dogs were this funny, what's the story.

After Reggie (voiced by Will Ferrell ) is abandoned by his owner, Doug ( Will Forte ), he's befriended by three other STRAYS who've been disappointed by humans: Bug ( Jamie Foxx ), Maggie ( Isla Fisher ), and Hunter ( Randall Park ). They show Reggie how fun life can be off leash, and when they realize that Reggie is being mistreated, they help him plot revenge against Doug. Voice talent also includes Josh Gad, Sofia Vergara, and Rob Riggle , and Dennis Quaid appears as himself.

Is It Any Good?

Rude, lewd, and absolutely hilarious, director Josh Greenbaum 's subversive comedy (with perfect voice casting) is effective at delivering its message: Be nice to animals. Owners who often "forget" to walk or feed their furry family member(s) are likely to start remembering after watching Strays . But parents may want to take a look before saying yes to what will undoubtedly be a "paw"-pular movie among teens, because it also has iffier takeaways. For instance, the dogs unknowingly lap up beer, leading to wild fun and Reggie's enthusiastically declaring "I like it!" Later, the dogs unwittingly eat psychedelic mushrooms and have a raucous, rowdy time. Both scenes drive home the idea that alcohol and drug use can help form and deepen friendships. And then there's the nonstop profanity -- let's just say it's pretty ruff .

Many of the people involved in making Strays are veterans of making kid-friendly entertainment: Ferrell is the Elf himself , producers Phil Lord and Chris Mille r are the creators of the Lego and Spider-Verse movies, and writer Dan Perrault was the host of a digital kid movie review series for Fandango. But that may be exactly why Strays is so funny: It converts the kid-friendly genre of dog movies into raunch, which shocks viewers into laughing -- kind of like South Park and Sausage Party did. The filmmakers are publicly (and responsibly) positioning Strays as entertainment for adults, but the question is: How many will heel to their warning?

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how comedy is used to deliver the the message of Strays. If it was a drama, do you think it would be equally effective? Do you think as many people would see it?

What role do drugs and alcohol play in the movie? Are they glamorized ? Are there real-life consequences? Why is that important?

How violent is the movie? How much gore is shown? What effect does it have? Is it funny? Shocking? Justified? Why do you think the extreme violence in this film makes viewers laugh , when the same thing happening in real life would be terrifying?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 18, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : September 5, 2023
• Cast : Will Ferrell , Jamie Foxx , Isla Fisher , Dennis Quaid
• Director : Josh Greenbaum
• Inclusion Information : Black actors, Female actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Comedy
• Topics : Cats, Dogs, and Mice
• Run time : 93 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : pervasive language, crude and sexual content, and drug use
• Last updated : February 29, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Strays (2023) Movie Review: Pleasant but Forgettable Talking-Dog Comedy Has Laughs, Heart, and a lot of Bite

“Strays” is 2023’s latest effort to revive R-rated comedies at the box office and should particularly appeal to anyone who was 13 or younger when “Dr. Dolittle 2” and “Cats & Dogs” were back-to-back hits in the summer of 2001. To that generational cohort, which also grew up on “Air Bud” and “Homeward Bound,” the movie’s MPAA classification promises a subversive take on childhood staples. Dialing the nostalgic factor up a few more notches are Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx, who are predictably hilarious as lead pups Reggie and Bug. Less expected is how deftly this buddy/revenge flick about phallic amputation manages to prod our emotions and remind us that raunch and heart are not mutually exclusive.

Reggie (Ferrell) is a Border Terrier unwittingly trapped in a toxic relationship with his sadistic owner, Doug (Will Forte). He only kept him after a break-up to spite his ex-girlfriend. Mistaking neglect for affection, Reggie can’t help but come running back to this porn- and pot-addicted manchild each time he’s abandoned during what he thinks is simply another round of a harmless game the two are playing called “Fetch and Fuck”, the latter part of the name owing to Doug’s exasperated expression when Reggie inevitably returns and drops the same raggedy tennis ball at his feet.

The game’s increasing difficulty, Reggie believes, is proof of Doug’s faith in his intelligence. Finally, alone in a city alley miles from home, he has no choice but to face the cold, hard truth that he’s unwanted.

Helping Reggie embrace his newfound status as a stray are Bug (Foxx), a cynical and foul-mouthed Boston Terrier, Maggie (Isla Fisher), a sexually frustrated Australian Shepherd whose vapid owner has replaced her with an adorable Pomeranian puppy (Greta Lee), and Hunter (Randall Park), a depressed Great Dane who failed the police academy and now works as a senior-care therapy dog.

After realizing that “shitbag” isn’t actually a term of endearment, Reggie resolves to find Doug once more and give him a dose of his own medicine by taking away the thing he loves most–his dick. “Strays” may be juvenile, but it isn’t brainless. And even when the humor flags, it’s seldom repetitive. Though poop jokes obviously come with the territory, they are less frequent than expected.

Instead of overly relying on the obvious, “Strays” maximizes the potential of its premise by placing Reggie and his new pals in distinct situations that each highlight a different facet of navigating the world as, well, a dog: At an outdoor bar, they plan their next meal by scoping out the clumsiest pair of hands; during a fireworks display at a carnival, the stark difference between human and canine hearing lends itself to a joke about religious guilt following an act of petty larceny; flight by way of a hungry bald eagle’s talons awakens Bug’s sense of mortality, and forage in the woods leads to a psychedelic trip on mushrooms that further expands our furry friends’ burgeoning self-awareness.

The movie’s philosophical insights are rudimentary at best. But they do imbue “Strays” with more depth than it probably deserves. When the proceedings take an emotional turn, the results are pretty poignant. However, “Strays’” creative team knows what you’ve come to see and delivers a satisfyingly balls-to-the-wall finale (no pun intended). A fitting needle drop that shouldn’t be spoiled sweetens the deal.

The film’s structure inspires admiration for its use of setpieces to move the characters along their literal and spiritual journey, wasting no time and building successfully on themes and gags established at the outset. That’s a tall order in light of haphazardly assembled offerings like “Joy Ride,” which lobs one throwaway joke at the audience after another to sustain a high LPM (Laughs Per Minute) rate with little to no regard for narrative cohesion. That being said, Strays’  concept occasionally runs into issues with consistency.

The dogs’ perception of human speech is so poor that Reggie can’t tell Doug wants to get rid of him, but at the same time, it is acute enough that they understand everything the people around them are saying. However, that’s beside the point and shouldn’t interfere too much with your ability to enjoy the humorous writing by “American Vandal” and “Players” creator Dan Perrault. Also, meriting notice is the visual effects by Cinesite, which do a mostly seamless job of blending with performances by actual canines. Where digital tricks falter, all-around stellar voice acting and strong editing pick up the slack.

Is “Strays” worth a trip to the theater? Without the involvement of Ferrell, Foxx, and producers Chris Miller and Phil Lord, it is hard to see how this entertaining but forgettable late-summer diversion would have avoided going directly to streaming, especially considering that Eva Longoria’s “Flamin’ Hot” was dumped unceremoniously on Hulu despite boasting some outstanding cinematography. But at a time when so many comedies feel half-baked, “Strays” gets an easy recommendation for being one that doesn’t skimp on the punchlines.

Read More: The 20 Best Dog Movies of All Time

Strays (2023) movie links: imdb , rotten tomatoes , wikipedia strays (2023) movie voice cast: will ferrell, jamie foxx, isla fisher, randall park, brett gelman, will forte strays (2023) movie genre: comedy, runtime: 1h 33m, where to watch strays, trending right now.

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‘The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady’ Review: Eva Green Surprises in French Blockbuster’s Less-Than-Faithful Finale

As in Richard Lester's two-part 1970s adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel, the villainous Milady takes the spotlight in the second half, though this time, the film inventively strays from the source.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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For readers of Alexandre Dumas’ novel, extravagant French adaptation “ The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady” packs its share of surprises: killing off important characters, sparing others and reimagining allegiances that have stood for nearly two centuries. For viewers of “Part I: D’Artagnan,” however, this swashbuckling sequel feels totally in keeping with what came before. Even the twists track, paying off what amounts to a nearly four-hour investment (not counting however many months audiences may have waited to see how the story ends).

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Bourboulon isn’t the first filmmaker to split Dumas’ novel down the middle. Half a century earlier, Richard Lester directed back-to-back features, dubbed “The Three Musketeers” and “The Four Musketeers” — though the latter was rechristened “They Call Her Milady” (“On l’appelait Milady”) in France, suggesting a precedent for accentuating Green’s character in the second half. She’s an infinitely more interesting source of obsession for D’Artagnan than Constance, who comes across as beatifically banal as played by Khoudri here. That in turn makes D’Artagnan’s efforts to rescue her seem rather uninspired, as if he could be doing something better with his time — like lusting after Milady.

In this telling, Constance stumbled upon the perpetrators of the plot to assassinate the king just before the first part ended, which at least imbues the character with a certain value. Still, it’s far more exciting to see D’Artagnan and Milady together, as they are early on, fighting side by side for a change. Bourboulon’s big innovation in these films can be seen in his action sequences, which typically unfold via elaborate oners — dynamic set-pieces designed to look as though they were captured in a single unbroken shot.

During an early escape, the camera chases after D’Artagnan, running along the lofty fortress parapet. When the young hero finds himself cornered, the lensman plunges right behind brave D’Artagnan into the moat. The effect is far more immersive than most adventure movies, which use quick cutting to place viewers in the fray. The way DP Nicolas Bolduc shoots these well-choreographed, minimally edited sequences, we feel like participants in the action, as in a knife fight that comes just a few scenes later, where the nimble camera is at knee level when D’Artagnan drives a blade through his opponent’s leg.

The other musketeers have less to do this time around, though each remains sworn to protecting the honor of others. Porthos has fallen in love with Aramis’ sister, Mathilde (Camille Rutherford), and together the two confront the cad who took advantage of her. In a rather confusing (but nonetheless exciting) subplot, Athos risks his life to rescue a comrade strapped to a wooden cross. He too has unfinished business with Milady — which remains the case all the way to the end, suggesting a thread that could inspire an off-canon “Part III,” should Bourboulon care to continue the epic.

Stateside, subtitles tend to relegate movies to art-houses, where the kind of young audiences most likely to appreciate such showy theatrics rarely set foot. Like last year’s “Napoleon,” this is megaplex entertainment at its most grand. Still, it would take some clever marketing to transform this import into a “Parasite”-style phenomenon, even if both well-made offerings have the same quality: They fill an entertainment niche that American movies have all but abdicated.

Reviewed online, Dec. 19, 2023. Running time: 121 MIN. (Original title: “Les trois mousquetaires: Milady”)

• Production: (France-Germany-Spain-Belgium) A Samuel Goldwyn Films (in U.S.), Pathé (in France) release of a Dimitri Rassam, Jérôme Seydoux presentation of a Chapter 2, Pathé Films, M6 Films production, in co-production with Constantin Films Produktion, ZDF, Deaplaneta, UMedia, with the participation of OCS, Canal+, M6, in association with Ufund, with the support of La Région Île-de-France, La Région Bretagne in partnership with the CNC, BNP Paribas. (World sales: Pathé, Paris.) Producer: Dimitri Rassam. Co-producer: Ardavan Safaee.
• Crew: Director: Martin Bourboulon. Screenplay: Matthieu Delaporte & Alexandre de La Patellière, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Camera: Nicolas Bolduc. Editor: Célia Lafitedupont. Music: Guillaume Roussel.
• With: François Civil, Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris, Pio Marmaï, Eva Green, Louis Garrel, Vicky Krieps, Lyna Khoudri, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Éric Ruf, Marc Barbé, Patrick Mille, Julien Frison. (French dialogue)

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‘abigail’ review: dan stevens and melissa barrera in an exuberantly over-the-top vampire horror-comedy.

Criminals get more than they bargained for when they kidnap the daughter of an underworld figure in the new Radio Silence film featuring Alisha Weir in the title role.

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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Radio silence talk 'abigail,' their 'scream' exit and trying to make 'the shining' elevators jealous, giancarlo esposito says he was so broke he considered arranging his own murder.

It’s a deliciously silly conceit, and the filmmakers — whose previous hits include Ready or Not , 2022’s Scream and Scream VI — run with it, demonstrating such an exuberant commitment to the genre that the movie industry may be facing a shortage of fake blood.   

Once her true identity is horrifyingly discovered, the criminals respond exactly as most people would. “Okay, what do we know about vampires?” one of them asks, before they reasonably go looking for vampires, wooden stakes, etc. Unfortunately for them, Abigail proves more powerful and resourceful than most of the undead, revealing a particular talent for bargaining with her would-be captors before dispatching them. In the sort of little-girl voice that would be heartbreaking if you didn’t know she was capable of biting your head off.

Vampire movies are, of course, a dime a dozen (the most recent major studio example being The Last Voyage of the Demeter ), but few are as gleefully anarchic as this one. For instance, I can’t recall any others in which a pre-teen Nosferatu, clad in a tutu, dances a pas de deux with a headless corpse.

None of it would work as well as it does without Weir’s mesmerizing turn in the title role. The young actress, who previously demonstrated her virtuosity in the film version of Matilda the Musical , is so frightening and sardonically funny as the pint-sized bloodsucker that Bela Lugosi must be turning over in his grave from jealousy. Assuming, of course, that he’s still in it.

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Sometimes I Think About Dying review – Daisy Ridley excels as shy office worker in offbeat comedy

​Rachel Lambert’s perceptive tale of a ​l​oner with a vividly imaginative inner life​ proves an unexpected showcase for the Star Wars actor​’s talents

S ome people settle effortlessly into the business of living. Others find it a near-impossible challenge. Fran (a revelatory performance from Daisy Ridley ) falls into the latter camp. A painfully introverted thirtysomething office worker, Fran has barricaded herself behind a rigid routine that minimises the risk of social interaction, both at work and after it. It’s not that she’s antisocial exactly, just that she has never quite grasped the rules of small talk, the ebb and flow of polite conversation. The amiable murmur of office banter might as well be playing out in Mandarin Chinese for all she comprehends of it.

It’s far easier for Fran to sink into her rich, if somewhat morbid interior life. Sporadically during the working day, a lush, romantic swell of harps and strings rises like a tidal surge on the score, drowning out the tinkling office chatter. And Fran treats herself to a moment of revery. She drifts away in her imagination, to a deserted forest glade or a beach – each location empty but for her own dead body. She isn’t suicidal – not actively, at least – but there’s something about death that appeals to her: the quiet of it, the simplicity. The fact that nobody is likely to ruin her day by asking her whether she would like a biscuit with her coffee.

This angular, acutely perceptive little film is a comedy in the most melancholy of minor keys. It’s as much about the silences and fumbled responses that come slightly too late to be of any conversational use as it is about what is actually said. And it showcases Ridley, the British actor best known for the recurring role of Rey in the Star Wars series, as a fascinating, unexpectedly offbeat talent. Not only does she disappear into the role; she unwraps the odd, idiosyncratic soul of her character largely without dialogue. US director Rachel Lambert points our gaze towards Fran’s nervous tics and tells, her bitten lip and the anxious dance of her feet under the desk. It’s a good 20 minutes into the film before Fran speaks, and when she does, her muttered sentence sounds as painful as a dental extraction.

We follow Fran, with her barbed-wire frown and almost aggressively inconspicuous wardrobe, as she scuttles through the ritual of her identical days. She tunes out her pleasantly unremarkable colleagues and immerses herself in the familiar safety of her spreadsheets; at home, she microwaves an unappetising brown disc of some sort of protein and eats it, topped with cottage cheese, in silence.

Just once, the outside world encroaches on her space. She is asked to contribute a message for a retiring colleague’s leaving card. In quiet consternation, intimidated by the easy camaraderie in the notes scrawled by her co-workers, she chews over the task, scrolling through her memories of the nondescript Carol. She settles for a small, restrained sentiment written in her small, restrained handwriting: “Happy Retirement, Fran.”

Then a new guy joins her workplace. Robert (Dave Merheje) pings her chatty messages over the office virtual message board. Inadvertently, Fran makes him laugh. He invites her to the cinema. New windows of social possibility start to open; windows that self-sabotaging Fran busily bricks shut, even as she finds herself increasingly drawn to the view.

It’s a step up in terms of profile for Lambert, a former theatre costume designer turned writer and director whose 2016 drama In the Radiant City made ripples on the festival circuit. Her intimate, frequently female-led storytelling has something of the crystalline delicacy and understated humour of Kelly Reichardt ’s work. The film makes the most of the doleful beauty of its Pacific north-west location (it’s mainly shot in the city of Astoria, Oregon). It’s a midway place, caught between past and present, the heavy, looming bulk of industry and the wild, untamed natural world; between inertia and possibility. It’s a setting that neatly reflects Fran’s quandary, torn between self-imposed isolation and a newfound hankering for connection.

While the time period isn’t specified, Sometimes I Think About Dying was shot during the height of the pandemic – a reality that, although not overtly addressed in the story, has seeped into every frame. It’s a Covid movie without Covid, an eloquent account of the unlearned social skills and sense of pandemic-enforced disengagement. It plays out at the tipping point at which living with loneliness starts to feel easier than tackling the daunting prospect of conversation with a stranger.

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Civil War Plays Like a Nightmare. You Should Still See It.

A24’s most expensive movie to date is borderline incoherent. that doesn’t mean it’s not important..

The year is unspecified—it could be a few years into some alternate future, or it could be right now. The president, a clean-cut establishment type played by Nick Offerman, is unnamed, his party and political affiliations unclear (though his rhetoric in an address to the nation sounds disturbingly authoritarian). And the precise nature of the domestic conflict that has torn the United States apart and turned the nation’s major cities into zones of open warfare is unexplained. In Civil War , the provocative fourth feature from Alex Garland ( Ex Machina , Annihilation , Men ), the details about why and how America collapsed into violent chaos are immaterial. What Garland wants is to drop us into the middle of that violent chaos as it unfolds, to make us see our familiar surroundings—ordinary blocks lined with chain drugstores and clothing boutiques—recast as active battlegrounds, with snipers on rooftops and local militias enforcing their own sadistic versions of the law.

One thing Garland’s at times frustratingly opaque script does go out of its way to clarify is that the ideological fissures in this alternate version of America occur along different fault lines than the ones that remain from the country’s actual civil war. The main threat to what we’ll call the Offerman administration is the secessionist group the Western Forces, a Texas-California alliance that’s intentionally impossible to extrapolate from our current red state–blue state split. There is also a separate rebel movement of some kind based in Florida, but above all, there is unchecked street violence and general social disorder. One early exchange of dialogue suggests that the war has been going on for some 14 months, which seems like too short a time for the country to have fallen into the advanced state of dystopia in which we find it: highways choked with empty cars, most of the population in hiding, the internet all but nonfunctional except in a few urban centers. But again, the point is less plausibility than viscerality. Garland got his start writing a zombie movie, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later , and he has also co-written an award-winning action video game. Civil War , A24’s most expensive movie to date, sometimes plays like a mashup of those two genres, with the viewer as first-person player and our armed fellow citizens as the zombies.

As the film begins, Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), a veteran war photographer,  is in New York City, holed up at a hotel that doubles as a makeshift command center for the press. Knowing that the Western Forces are on the verge of taking the capital, Lee and her longtime professional partner, a wire-service reporter named Joel (Wagner Moura), are planning a perilous road trip from New York to D.C. in the unlikely hope of landing an interview with the embattled president. Lee’s longtime mentor, news editor Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), warns them that the plan is sheer madness—then asks if, despite his age and limited mobility, he can get in on the action.

As they’re preparing to leave, they’re joined, despite Lee’s protests, by Jessie ( Priscilla ’s Cailee Spaeny), an aspiring photojournalist in her early 20s who idolizes Lee’s work but has no experience in war zones. Bringing along the stowaway Lee disparages as a “kindergartner” will only, she argues, put all of them in even more danger. These doubts turn out to be justified: The presence of Jessie, a live wire with a penchant for unnecessary risk-taking, makes the journey to D.C. even more perilous, while forcing Lee to confront how jaded she’s become after years of compartmentalizing her most scarring memories. On the way to the capital, this multigenerational foursome encounters gas-station vigilantes, a shootout at an abandoned Christmas-themed amusement park, and a gut-churning encounter with a racist militant played by Dunst’s real-life husband, Jesse Plemons.

In its vision of journalism as a form of amoral adventure-seeking, Civil War belongs to a long tradition of films about hardened war correspondents in far-flung places, movies like A Private War and The Year of Living Dangerously . But the fact that the carnage these reporters are documenting is homegrown shifts the inflection significantly. Suddenly it’s impossible to exoticize or otherwise alienate ourselves from the bloodshed onscreen, which makes us ask ourselves what we were doing exoticizing it in the first place. This effect of moral immediacy is Civil War ’s greatest strength, and the reason it feels like an important movie of its moment even if it isn’t a wholly coherent or consistently insightful one.

Garland’s idea of throwing us in medias res during a civil war in progress is a bold gambit, and his cinematic instincts—his sense of where to put a camera and how long to draw out a moment of suspense—are often keen. The horrible realities he makes us look at—intra-civilian combat, physical and psychological torture, the everyday depths of human depravity—are summoned powerfully enough that Civil War remains emotionally and physically affecting even as the ideas it seeks to explore remain fuzzy. Is this a critique of contemporary journalism or a salute to the courage of reporters on the front lines? If it’s meant to be suspended somewhere in between, how does the filmmaker position himself on that line, and how should we, the audience, feel about the protagonists’ sometimes dubious choices?

Even as they document street battles and point-blank executions, adrenaline junkies Jessie and Joel occasionally exchange devilish grins. Meanwhile, Lee is all but incapable of normal human relationships because of her unacknowledged PTSD. A late sequence finds them unofficially embedded with an especially ruthless death squad; it would seem important to establish whether this alignment is meant to signify their ultimate journalistic corruption or a necessary compromise for the survival of the Fourth Estate. Even on the level of plot logic, the movie poses a question that the script’s curiously thin worldbuilding never answers: If the internet and most of the nation’s industrial infrastructure are in ruins, how are ordinary people reading Joel’s articles and looking at the photos that Lee herself struggles for hours to upload? If it is intended in part as a satire of journalistic opportunism, Civil War should be more specific about the conditions of 21 st -century media in wartime, especially given that it’s coming out at a moment when front-line reporters face more physical danger than at any time in recent memory.

All we learn of Lee’s background is that, like Jessie, she is from a farm town in the interior of the U.S., with parents who are in stubborn denial about the crumbling of the republic. But because Kirsten Dunst is a remarkable artist, she makes this somewhat underwritten character, who on paper could have been a stoic “badass” stereotype, into a complex and indelible presence. Dunst also, perhaps for the first time, loses the girlish quality she has brought even to middle-aged characters: Lee Smith is a plain, scowling woman with a glum, even abrasive mien. She’s a person whose perspective on life has narrowed down to the size of a camera lens, yet she’s also a committed journalist and a fiercely loyal colleague. As the other three sort-of protagonists, Moura, Henderson, and Spaeny all turn in finely tuned performances that bring a depth to their characters beyond what the script provides, but it’s Dunst whose thousand-yard stare and deep-buried grief will stay with me.

“What kind of American are you?” Plemons’ fatigues-and-pink-sunglasses-clad character asks the journalists one by one as he terrorizes them at gunpoint in the movie’s scariest and most successful sequence. (Not for nothing, it’s also the moment that suggests the most strongly that the vaguely defined conflict in this fictive America has everything to do with race.) That may be the screenplay’s smartest single line, in that it dispenses with the metaphorical quality of Civil War ’s imagined political dystopia and presents us with the real question many Americans are asking each other and themselves right now, sometimes in a self-reflective mode, sometimes in a contentious or overtly threatening one. As the unfolding of that encounter with Plemons makes clear, as soon as the question is asked with a weapon in your hand, it becomes a trick question, posed not to start a conversation but to set a trap. Civil War often leaves the audience feeling trapped in an all-too-realistic waking nightmare, but when it finally lets us go, mercifully short of the two-hour mark, it sends us out of the theater talking.