When Border Terrier Reggie (voiced by Will Ferrell) is abandoned by his owner Doug (Will Forte) he joins up with fellow strays Bug (Jamie Foxx), Maggie (Isla Fisher) and Hunter (Randall Park) to learn the rules of the street and track down his owner. 

I had high hopes for Strays based on its trailer. It features Will Ferrell doing his naive everything is wonderful schtick and Will Forte playing a total slob with a vindictive streak. It seemed like it could be a low brow laugh out loud comedy. Unfortunately aside from a funny opening ten minutes, most of which is in that trailer, the film is dire. 

Strays is essentially adolescent humour on overload. It features both a dogs getting drunk whilst out on the town sequence and a dogs getting high on psychedelic mushrooms sequence. There are jokes about sex, erections, masturbation and at its absolute nadir a whole lot of dog shit. 

The plot is basic by design. After all this is the kind of dog movie that should be for kids but features x-rated jokes. But what plot there is features many tropes that would be found in a buddy comedy or romantic comedy and nothing made me roll my eyes more than the moment near the end that features a misunderstanding that breaks the gang up just so they can later be reunited. 

It does feature an obscure film reference joke by having Dennis Quaid make a cameo. He recently had a big hit with film “A Dog’s Journey” that features talking animals. But that is about as clever (and obscure) as the jokes get. 

Unless your humour is that of a thirteen year old boy I would avoid this like the plague. If you choose not to, there is a mid credits sequence after the Snoop Dog song!