My Review of "Strays"

Strays is a comedy that came out in 2023. It's very different because it's basically about a adventure based on dogs. Though there are some very comedic ideas throughout this movie some of them fell flat because of the delivery. I think with a little revision this movie could have been spectacular but there's a few things that held it back.

The movie starts off with the introduction of Reggie. He's a little dog owned by a very horrible man by the name of Doug. They got Doug spot on because you can't help but hate this guy. He even makes the end sequence way more satisfying when you get to see it.

Basically Doug adopted Reggie just so that he could get a girl to like him. Out of spite, Doug actually keeps Reggie just so that he could hurt the girl that he was with even more when they break up. Over the course of months Doug pretty much does anything to get rid of Reggie but Reggie somehow miraculously finds his way back to Doug.

Reggie can't see that he's in an abusive relationship. He basically wants Doug's love and approval but he'll never get it. It doesn't help that he doesn't understand what Doug is saying to help him understand that he's not wanted.

One day Doug had had enough of Reggie. He decides to drive 3 hours out of town in order to lose Reggie. This is a huge distance so Reggie actually gets lost in this unknown area he's in. There he meets a stray dog named Bug. The two get along pretty fast but Bug has to kind of reprogram Reggie to understand that he's an abused animal. He wants the best for Reggie but Reggie is a devoted animal and just can't seem to get it out of his head that he should stay clear of Doug.

When Bug and two other dogs finally clue Reggie in to what has been happening to him. Reggie hatches a plan to enact revenge on his owner. The gang of strays like this plan and decide to help Reggie get back to his owner to help him on his quest.

This is all done in very crude language and very obscene scenarios. In a way it makes sense because we know dogs are animals and act on natural instincts. The filthy language is something you have to kind of get used to in order to get through the movie. I found it funny that they used such crude language that they had to say poop in order to differentiate the swear word and fecal matter. The language was kind of a turn off for me for the movie. It's fun in certain areas but they overused a lot of this language.

The other thing I really had an issue with is that this movie kind of has the same issue I had with the live action version of The Lion King. Everything looks realistic but you can tell that they used computers to animate the dogs mouths to fit the voice actors. I mentioned before that I hated the fact that the faces in The Lion King weren't expressive enough. This is the same situations with this movie. It hits both of these movies hard because they're supposed to be comedic and part of comedy is exaggerated facial features and body language. Due to the fact that everything looks so realistic you don't really have that. Instead you have these realistic looking dogs that don't really do much. I think if they spent more time making these dogs look more expressive this would have helped immensely with a lot of the jokes and the crazy situations that they were put in.

They use a lot of stereotypical tropes that we have of ourselves and dogs. I liked how they played around with a dogs perspective for small things that happen around them. We get a bit of dramatic irony when we hear their perspective of things. Some of the jokes play upon the voice actors as well. If you're familiar with the actors you will find some of the in jokes to be chuckle worthy.

Otherwise the movie was kind of blandish throughout the runtime. I saw so many missed opportunities because of the lackluster expressions of the dogs. This really could have been something because we had a pretty darn good cast of voice actors. They did a lot of great work with a lot of expressive acting but again the dogs did not fit the voices.

Overall, I thought this was okay up until the end. I loved the ending of this movie. It is not something I would recommend to people to watch but there is still some fun to be had with it if you're really bored. I wished they spent a little more time with the animation of the dogs that's all. It would be night and day if they did. As this movie is I have to give it a 6 out of 10 only because I loved the villain and how they finished off the movie.