“Strays” starts with the best day ever. Or the worst, depending on how you look at it.
Reggie, a scruffy little terrier voiced by Will Ferrell, spends the day hanging out with his human, Doug (Will Forte). Doug is Reggie’s favorite person in the world. In Reggie’s eyes, Doug can do no wrong. He loves when Doug yells at him. He loves when Doug pushes him off the couch. And he especially loves when Doug drives him to the middle of nowhere, throws a tennis ball as far as humanly possible, and drives off before Reggie – or as Doug refers to him, “Shitbag” – can bring it back.
Despite Doug’s clear hatred for Reggie, Ferrell delivers this monologue with all the earnestness expected of a dog’s brand of unconditional love. The dissonance between Reggie’s adoration and Doug’s disdain in the opening moments of “Strays” – directed by Josh Greenbaum and written by Dan Perrault – is meant to draw a laugh from the audience, the sequence peppered with jokes at Doug and Reggie’s expense. But something about Ferrell returning to “Elf” levels of sweetness paired with Forte’s more chilling than funny turn creates a sense of resounding unease that never fully launches into humor.
Therein lies the rub with “Strays.” Tipped as an R-rated update of animal adventure movies a la “Homeward Bound,” “Strays” is tonally dissonant to the point of utter confusion. In its attempt to merge raunchy comedy with heart, it fails at both, mired by off-kilter pacing and uncanny CGI that limits the charm of both the voice actors and their canine counterparts. The script and direction play at extremity without really understanding what makes an over the top moment funny in the first place, most of the gags bending toward uncomfortable rather than funny.
After Doug gets rid of Reggie for good, he runs into a pack of strays who vow to help him exact revenge on his former owner. The group includes Bug (Jamie Foxx), a Boston Terrier who serves as the Artful Dodger of the group; Maggie (Isla Fisher), an Australian Shepherd with a keen sense of smell; and Hunter (Randall Park), a Great Dane who failed at becoming a police dog and made the transition into therapy work.
Perhaps the worst decision in all of “Strays” is the choice to sync up the dogs’ mouths with the dialogue using CGI. Notably, Reggie’s opening monologue does not use this effect, taking place completely inside his head. Despite missing the mark on tone, that choice lifted my spirits somewhat, as it allowed the adorable face of the dog playing Reggie to shine through. As with the majority of animal adventure movies, the dogs in “Strays” are the most enjoyable aspect of the whole endeavor. But when the CGI kicks in, the uncanny sight of their talking mouths detracts from their otherwise remarkably cute faces, dampening the expressiveness of their eyes and ears.
The voices coming out of those unnaturally moving mouths deliver solid performances, particularly Ferrell and Foxx. But they’re not good enough to save the movie from its worst impulses. With its humor, “Strays” strives for weirdness without ever achieving true eccentricity. The movie actually works better when it stays simple, riffing on things like dogs’ fear of fireworks, or their hatred of the mailman. But more often than not, the gags try for some perceived notion of madcap nonsense and fail, delving into extremity with a strange penchant for violence that the film mistakes for humor in its shock value. That slight violent streak bleeds over into the film’s more sentimental moments as well, and that tonal whiplash is more likely to make you cringe than laugh.
