Luca Filigenzi, Guest Writer

Cinema can tell a gut-wrenching story about a prisoner seeking redemption and escape, or a beautiful love story so realistic you’ll forget it’s between robots. Strays (2023) uses cinema to show dogs getting high on mushrooms and making dookie jokes. Get ready for some hating, because these dogs’ purpose is to drive people insane.

Strays, released Aug. 18 and directed by Josh Greenbaum, centers around Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx, who play dogs Reggie and Bug, respectively. 

In Strays, Will Ferrell plays a Border Terrier named Reggie who vows to enact revenge on his abusive owner with a pack of fellow dogs. While the cast is star-studded, our writer finds the plot juvenile and far from stellar.

The duo go on a quest to remove the penis from Ferrell’s cruel owner, played by Will Forte. All the while they meet several other stray dogs, and a new family is forged.

This film takes something that people love and associate with wholesomeness — dogs — and bastardizes their image in a crude attempt to achieve maturity in their humor. 

Beyond just the dogs, this film taints the record of the beloved actors involved. Will Ferrell is one of the most popular comedic actors of this century, and Jamie Foxx has won Oscars for his performances. Now they’re doing this. Strays doesn’t give their characters any substance or sympathy to work with. Rule of thumb: The more human qualities a character has, the better they are. These dogs have no character to speak of outside of basic traits, like “funny,” “quirky” and “dumb.” These are just basic desires and goals to forward the predictable plot without any concern of the journey that these characters should be having.

One of the few positives comments that can be said about this film is that it is voice acted well. Ferrell, Foxx and Forte all do an admirable job, bringing their years of voice acting experience to the table. 

However, as stated, it only serves to emphasize the crude and unfunny aspects that riddle the rest of this god awful movie. It cannot be stressed enough that the plot of the film revolves around biting off a penis in the name of vengeance. 

In other films with a quest, there is a greater purpose, such as in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. There is the base quest of destroying the ring, but in that journey there are themes of destiny, corruption, family, heritage, power, evil and so many more brought to life via competent story-telling and direction. 

Meanwhile in Strays, the closest thing to a moral is “we don’t choose our family.” However,  they don’t actually spend time signifying that to the viewer: Instead, they cram seven drug, alcohol and sex jokes into a single minute. Some can be nice, but gross is not funny or tasteful. A combination of gross and funny is tasteful. This film only has one of those two traits. Can you guess which one? 

Either way, the core element of any film is its story, its uniqueness, its reason for existing. Strays offers very little in terms of worthwhile story and even less in terms of themes that can be applied to daily lives.

However, it is true that no story is inherently awful based on it’s plot. Films can be excellent despite having admittedly silly plots. While this film is quite silly, it lacks development. Perhaps in the hands of more competent staff, Strays would be a genuine piece of art, hailed by critics and audiences as a cornerstone of the entertainment industry. However, in this world, it is little more than a dog dropping. A smelly, unpleasant to look at, piece of filth that you’d scrape off your boot and never think about again.

If you showed this film to the wolves that would evolve to become these dogs thousands of years ago, they would first be confused as they cannot understand language. Rest assured, if they could understand, their disappointment in their descendants would be immeasurable. 

Its plot is weak, devoid of purpose, morals, or even competent comedy, and the absolute worst part is that it wastes actors who have done far, FAR better work than their work here.