Strays (2023)

Strays is what happens when a sweet, wide-eyed dog movie gets dropped into an R-rated blender and comes out weirdly heartfelt on the other side: a filthy, fast, surprisingly sincere buddy adventure about realizing you deserve better. Josh Greenbaum keeps the pace zipping and the joke density high, while the voice cast—Will Ferrell’s eager innocence, Jamie Foxx’s streetwise swagger, and Isla Fisher’s sharp warmth—turn crude chaos into an oddball kind of charm. The vibe is gleefully tasteless and unapologetically profane, but it’s not just shock-for-shock’s-sake; underneath the vulgarity is a scrappy little story about friendship and self-respect. Fair warning: if relentless swearing, sexual jokes, and gross-out gags aren’t your thing, this will be a hard pass—but if they are, it’s a riot with more heart than it has any right to.

Strays is trying to be a raunchy, R-rated “dogs talk like awful humans” road comedy with a surprisingly earnest message about breaking free from a toxic owner. The problem is it leans so hard on shock value—constant profanity, sex jokes, and a lot of bodily-function humor—that the laughs can feel repetitive and the premise wears thin before the movie’s over. If you’re expecting clever satire, visual inventiveness, or something you could ever watch with anyone remotely squeamish, this probably isn’t your lane. Still, if you have a high tolerance for crude gags and just want a dumb, loud hangout with solid voice performances (especially Foxx and Ferrell), it delivers exactly that.