A comedy so memorable that I actually watched it about a year ago and couldn't bring myself, at that time, to write a full review for it, Strays is a fun concept that I'm sure will amuse many. It didn't work for me though, at least not as well as I hoped it would.
Will Ferrell voices Reggie, a cute little dog who finds himself a stray when he's abandoned by his loser of a human owner, Doug (Will Forte). Reggie soon meets Bug (Jamie Foxx), Maggie (Isla Fisher), and Hunter (Randall Park), other strays who help him adapt to life on the streets. It takes him some time to realise just how awful his owner was though, but eventually he gains some clarity. That's when he comes up with a plan to get home and, well, bite Doug's dick off.
If you like some of the cast members here then you're bound to find a few laughs. Will Ferrell plays Reggie with the kind of comedic innocence that he's done before, and it works well. Foxx is tough, but a very good friend, while Fisher and Park grow close to one another in a way that is obvious to everyone but themselves. Other voices come from Rob Riggle, Josh Gad, Sofia Vergara, Jamie Demetriou, Jimmy Tatro, and a few other fun performers. Forte is enjoyably loathsome, making his apparent destiny something that viewers will really look forward to, and there's a random and very amusing cameo from Dennis Quaid just being a version of Dennis Quaid.
Writer Dan Perrault throws in a lot of obvious gags (things revolving around peeing, pooping, or humping whatever looks humpable), and there's an entertaining sequence that has the dogs tripping after eating the wrong kind of mushrooms, but I will give him kudos for committing to a couple of the darker punchlines in ways that were slightly unexpected.
Josh Greenbaum has about three features under his belt by now. This is the least of them. While not inept or absolutely awful, it's disappointingly . . . basic. That might be down to the fact that this was done in live-action, because it would be a much better fit for some kind of animation, but it's also obvious that Greenbaum consistently makes the most obvious and uninspired choices for source material that is middling, at best.
I laughed a few times, and I was grossed out by one sequence that led to an inevitable poop-centric set-piece, but, overall, this feels like a film made about 30-40 years too late. Oh, dogs pee on things to claim them, hahaha, dogs hump lots of things, hehehe, dogs do poop a lot sometimes, hohoho. If you're going to fill your film with old standards then you need to find new or interesting ways to frame them. This doesn't.
4/10
If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do
consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A
subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share
No comments:
Post a Comment